t in the smoking-compartment
thought was no longer to be held in abeyance, and he yielded to it
with no effort at restraint.

Sleep was impossible. The train, due at Washington at seven-twelve,
would there have to be changed to a local for Fredericksburg, but the
early rising was no hardship. To sit up all night would have been
none. Each turn of the wheel was taking him nearer and nearer, and
to listen to them was strange joy. Only that morning he had wished
Christmas was over, had indeed counted the days before business could
again absorb, and now every hour would be priceless, every moment to
be held back hungrily.

One by one, the days in which he had seen Claudia passed in review
before him. The turn of her head, the light on her hair, the poise
of her body on her horse, bits of gay talk, the few long quiet ones,
the look of eyes unafraid of life, light laughter, and sometimes
quick frown and quicker speech, and, clearest of all, the evening in
which she had told him the story, with Channing in her arms and
Dorothea in his. There had been few waking moments in which it had
not repeated itself to him, and in his dreams the scene would change
and the home would be theirs--his home and hers--and she would be
telling him again what life should mean.

He had long known the name of the land in which he lived. It was,
indeed, a Lonely Land; but that it was of his own choosing he had not
understood, nor had he cared to think all people were his people.
There was much that he must know. He needed help, needed it
infinitely. If she would give it-- A man, reeling slightly, came in
the compartment, and, getting up, Laine went out quickly. For a few
moments he stood in the vestibule and let the air from a partly open
door blow over him, then, with a glance at the stars, turned and came
inside.

At Fredericksburg the next morning Laine turned to the negro hackman,
who, with Chesterfieldian bows, was hovering over his baggage and
boxes, and made inquiries of the boat, the time of leaving, of a
hotel, of what there was to see during the hours of waiting; and
before he understood how it happened he found himself and his
paraphernalia in the shabby old hack and was told he would be taken
to the boat at once. He had never been to Virginia, had never seen a
specimen of human nature such as now flourished a whip in one hand
and with the other waved a battered and bruised silk hat toward the
muddy street that led from