ouple of months at least, if she and Oliver were to be married so soon.
The hopeful parting in the Grand Central--"But, Nancy, you're sure you
wouldn't mind going across second-class?"

"Why Ollie, dear, how silly! Why, what would it matter?" "All right,
then, and remember, I'll wire _just_ as soon as things really start to
break--"

And then for eight months, nothing at all but letters and letters,
except two times, once in New York, once in St. Louis, when both had
spent painful savings because they simply had to see each other again,
since even the best letters were only doll-house food you could look
at and wish you could eat--and both had tried so hard to make each
disappearing minute perfect before they had to catch trains again that
the effort left them tired as jugglers who have been balancing too
many plates and edgy at each other for no cause in the world except the
unfairness that they could only have each other now for so short a time.
And the people, the vast unescapable horde of the dull-but-nice or
the merely dull who saw in their meetings nothing either particularly
spectacular or pitiful or worth applause.

And always after the parting, a little crippled doubt tapping its
crutches along the alleys of either mind. "Do I _really?_ Because if I
do, how can I be so tired sometimes with her, with him? And why can't I
say more and do more and be more when he, when she? And everybody says.
And they're older than we are--mightn't it be true? And--" And then,
remorsefully, the next day, all doubt burnt out by the clear hurt of
absence. "Oh how could I! When it is real--when it is like that--when it
is the only thing worth while in the world!"

But absence and meetings of this sort told on them inescapably, and both
being, unfortunately, of a rather high-strung intelligence and youth,
recognized it, no matter how much consciousness might deny it, and
wondered sometimes, rather pitiably, why they couldn't be always at one
temperature, like lovers in poetry, and why either should ever worry
or hurt the other when they loved. Any middle-aged person could and
did tell them that they were now really learning something about
love--omitting the small fact that Pain, though he comes with the
highest literary recommendations is really not the wisest teacher of
all in such matters--all of which helped the constant nervous and
psychological strain on both as little as a Latin exorcism would help
a fever. For the very re