irst, but to try to divert your thoughts and make you
feel that you were among friends."

"You have indeed made me feel that," I answered. "But you see it is a
good deal of a jolt to drop a hundred years, and although I did not
seem to feel it so much last night, I have had very odd sensations
this morning." While I held her hands and kept my eyes on her face, I
could already even jest a little at my plight.

"No one thought of such a thing as your going out in the city alone so
early in the morning," she went on. "Oh, Mr. West, where have you
been?"

Then I told her of my morning's experience, from my first waking till
the moment I had looked up to see her before me, just as I have told
it here. She was overcome by distressful pity during the recital, and,
though I had released one of her hands, did not try to take from me
the other, seeing, no doubt, how much good it did me to hold it. "I
can think a little what this feeling must been like," she said. "It
must have been terrible. And to think you were left alone to struggle
with it! Can you ever forgive us?"

"But it is gone now. You have driven it quite away for the present," I
said.

"You will not let it return again," she queried anxiously.

"I can't quite say that," I replied. "It might be too early to say
that, considering how strange everything will still be to me."

"But you will not try to contend with it alone again, at least," she
persisted. "Promise that you will come to us, and let us sympathize
with you, and try to help you. Perhaps we can't do much, but it will
surely be better than to try to bear such feelings alone."

"I will come to you if you will let me," I said.

"Oh yes, yes, I beg you will," she said eagerly. "I would do anything
to help you that I could."

"All you need do is to be sorry for me, as you seem to be now," I
replied.

"It is understood, then," she said, smiling with wet eyes, "that you
are to come and tell me next time, and not run all over Boston among
strangers."

This assumption that we were not strangers seemed scarcely strange, so
near within these few minutes had my trouble and her sympathetic tears
brought us.

"I will promise, when you come to me," she added, with an expression
of charming archness, passing, as she continued, into one of
enthusiasm, "to seem as sorry for you as you wish, but you must not
for a moment suppose that I am really sorry for you at all, or that I
think you will long be sorry for y