reat buildings and shoulders
disappearing in the clouds, a colossus of steel and wholly blackened
with soot. But Bibbs carried his fancy further--for there was still a
little poet lingering in the back of his head--and he thought that up
over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant labored with his hands
in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what he made
there--perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
were children now--a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white--

It was the telephone that called him from his vision. It rang fiercely.

He lifted the thing from his desk and answered--and as the small voice
inside it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash. He trembled
violently as he picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong--he had
been mistaken--yet it was a startlingly beautiful voice; startlingly
kind, too, and ineffably like the one he hungered most to hear.

"Who?" he said, his own voice shaking--like his hand.

"Mary."

He responded with two hushed and incredulous words: "IS IT?"

There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
"Bibbs--I wanted to--just to see if you--"

"Yes--Mary?"

"I was looking when you were so nearly run over. I saw it, Bibbs.
They said you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know for
myself."

"No, no, I wasn't hurt at all--Mary. It was father who came nearer it.
He saved me."

"Yes, I saw; but you had fallen. I couldn't get through the crowd until
you had gone. And I wanted to KNOW."

"Mary--would you--have minded?" he said.

There was a long interval before she answered.

"Yes."

"Then why--"

"Yes, Bibbs?"

"I don't know what to say," he cried. "It's so wonderful to hear your
voice again--I'm shaking, Mary--I--I don't know--I don't know anything
except that I AM talking to you! It IS you--Mary?"

"Yes, Bibbs!"

"Mary--I've seen you from my window at home--only five times since
I--since then. You looked--oh, how can I tell you? It was like a man
chained in a cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary. Mary, won't
you--let me see you again--near? I think I could make you really forgive
me--you'd have to--"

"I DID--then."

"No--not really--or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me any
more."

"That wasn't the reason." The voice was very low.

"Mary," he said, even more tremulously than before, "I can't--you
COULDN'T mean it was because--you can't mean it was because you--car