masters had
better look out, or some of them are going to land in Hell!
"Yes, I'll stop over here, one day, and look and listen. Sorry I can't
take part, but I mustn't. My game, now, is to travel underground as it
were. I've got a bigger job in view than soap-boxing, just _now_!"
He ate a simple supper at an "Owl" lunch-cart, totally unaware that,
across the street, a couple of Cosmos men were waiting for him to come
out. And, after this, buying a Socialist paper, he strolled into Evans
Park to sit and read, a while, by the red light of the descending sun.
Here he remained till dark, smoking his briar, watching the dirty,
ragged children of the wretched wage-slaves at play; observing the
exploited men and women on the park-benches, as they sought a little
fresh air and respite from toil; and pondering the problems that still
lay before him. At times--often indeed--his thoughts wandered to the
maple-grove and the old sugar-house, far away on the Hudson. Memories of
the girl would not be banished, nor longings for her. Who she might be,
he still knew not. Unwilling to learn, he had refrained from looking up
the number he had copied from the plate of the wrecked machine. He had
even abstained from reading the papers, a few days, lest he might see
some account of the accident. A strange kind of unwillingness to know
the woman's name possessed him--a feeling that, if he positively
identified her as one of some famous clan of robbers and exploiters, he
could no longer cherish her memory or love the thought of how they two
had, for an hour, sat together and talked and been good, honest friends.
"No," he murmured to himself, "it's better this way--just to recall her
as a girl in need, a girl who let me help her, a girl I can always
remember with kind thoughts, as long as I live!"
From his pocket he took the little handkerchief, which wrapped the
leaf, once part of her bed. A faint, elusive scent still hung about
it--something of her, still it seemed. He closed his eyes, there on the
hard park bench, and let his fancies rove whither they would; and for a
time it seemed to him a wondrous peace possessed him.
"If it could only have been," he murmured, at last. "If only it could
be!"
Then suddenly urged by a realization of the hopelessness of it all, he
stood up, pocketed the souvenirs of her again, and walked away in the
dusk; away, through the park; away, at random, through squalid, ugly
streets, where the first el
|