will be down at the station to meet me. You'd like my wife. You'd like her fine!—Oh, I say now, you come home with us for Sunday, and think things over a bit."

As delightedly as when the Traveling Salesman had asked her how she fixed her hair, the Youngish Girl's hectic nervousness broke into genuine laughter. "Yes," she teased, "I can see just how pleased your wife would be to have you bring home a perfectly strange lady for Sunday!"

"My wife is only a kid," said the Traveling Salesman gravely, "but she likes what I like—all right—and she'd give you the shrewdest, eagerest little 'helping hand' that you ever got in your life—if you'd only give her a chance to help you out—with whatever your trouble is."

"But I haven't any 'trouble,'" persisted the Youngish Girl with brisk cheerfulness. "Why, I haven't any trouble at all! Why, I don't know but what I'd just as soon tell you all about it. Maybe I really ought to tell somebody about it. Maybe—anyway, it's a good deal easier to tell a stranger than a friend. Maybe it would really do me good to hear how it sounds out loud. You see, I've never done anything but whisper it—just to myself—before. Do you remember the wreck on the Canadian Pacific Road last year? Do you? Well—I was in it!"

"Gee!" said the Traveling Salesman. "'Twas up on just the edge of Canada, wasn't it? And three of the passenger coaches went off the track? And the sleeper went clear over the bridge? And fell into an awful gully? And caught fire besides?"

"Yes," said the Youngish Girl. "I was in the sleeper."

Even without seeming to look at her at all, the Traveling Salesman could see quite distinctly that the Youngish Girl's knees were fairly knocking together and that the flesh around her mouth was suddenly gray and drawn, like an old person's. But the little persistent desire to laugh off everything still flickered about the corners of her lips.

"Yes," she said, "I was in the sleeper, and the two people right in front of me were killed; and it took almost three hours, I think, before they got any of us out. And while I was lying there in the darkness and mess and everything, I cried—and cried—and cried. It wasn't nice of me, I know, nor brave, nor anything, but I couldn't seem to help it—underneath all that pile of broken seats and racks and beams and things.

"And pretty soon a man's voice—just a voice, no face or anything, you know, but just a voice from somewhere quite near me, spoke right out and said: 'What in creation are you crying so about? Are you awfully hurt?' And I said—though I didn't mean to say it at all, but it came right out—'N-o, I don't think I'm hurt, but I don't like having all these seats and windows piled on top of me,' and I began crying all over again. 'But no one else is crying,' reproached the Voice.—'And there's a perfectly good reason why not,' I said. 'They're all dead!'—'O—h,' said the Voice, and then I began to cry harder than ever, and principally this time, I think, I cried because the horrid, old red plush cushions smelt so stale and dusty, jammed against my nose.

"And then after a long time the Voice spoke again and it said, 'If I'll sing you a little song, will you stop crying?' And I said, 'N-o, I don't think I could!' And after a long time the Voice spoke again, and it said, 'Well, if I'll tell you a story will you stop crying?' And I considered it a long time, and finally I said, 'Well, if you'll tell me a perfectly true story—a story that's never, never been told to any one before—I'll try and stop!'

"So the Voice gave a funny little laugh almost like a woman's hysterics, and I stopped crying right off short, and the Voice said, just a little bit mockingly: 'But the only perfectly true story that I know—the only story that's never—never been told to anybody before is the story of my life.' 'Very well, then,' I said, 'tell me that! Of course I was planning to live to be very old and learn a little about a great many things; but as long as apparently I'm not going to live to even reach my twenty-ninth birthday—to-morrow—you don't know how unutterably it would comfort me to think that at least I knew everything about some one thing!'

"And then the Voice choked again, just a little bit, and said: 'Well—here goes, then. Once upon a time—but first, can you move your right hand? Turn it just a little bit more this way. There! Cuddle it down! Now, you see, I've made a little home for it in mine. Ouch! Don't press down too hard! I think my wrist is broken. All ready, then? You won't cry another cry? Promise? All right then. Here goes. Once upon a time—'

"Never mind about the story," said the Youngish Girl tersely. "It began about the first thing in all his life that he remembered seeing—something funny about a grandmother's brown wig hung over the edge of a white piazza railing—and he told me his name and address, and all about his people, and all about his business, and what banks his money was in, and something about some land down in the Panhandle, and all the bad things that he'd ever done in his life, and all the good things, that he wished there'd been more of, and all the things that no one would dream of telling you if he ever, ever expected to see Daylight again—things so intimate—things so—

"But it wasn't, of course, about his story that I wanted to tell you. It was about the 'home,' as he called it, that his broken hand made for my—frightened one. I don't know how to express it; I can't exactly think, even, of any words to explain it. Why, I've been all over the world, I tell you, and fairly loafed and lolled in every conceivable sort of ease and luxury, but the Soul of me—the wild, restless, breathless, discontented soul of me—never sat down before in all its life—I say, until my frightened hand cuddled into his broken one. I tell you I don't pretend to explain it, I don't pretend to account for it; all I know is—that smothering there under all that horrible wreckage and everything—the instant my hand went home to his, the most absolute sense of serenity and contentment went over me. Did you ever see young white horses straying through a white-birch wood in the springtime? Well, it felt the way that looks!—Did you ever hear an alto voice singing in the candle-light? Well, it felt the way that sounds! The last vision you would like to glut your eyes on before blindness smote you! The last sound you would like to glut your ears on before deafness dulled you! The last touch—before Intangibility! Something final, complete, supreme—ineffably satisfying!

"And then people came along and rescued us, and I was sick in the hospital for several weeks. And then after that I went to Persia. I know it sounds silly, but it seemed to me as though just the smell of Persia would be able to drive away even the memory of red plush dust and scorching woodwork. And there was a man on the steamer whom I used to know at home—a man who's almost always wanted to marry me. And there was a man who joined our party at Teheran—who liked me a little. And the land was like silk and silver and attar of roses. But all the time I couldn't seem to think about anything except how perfectly awful it was that a stranger like me should be running round loose in the world, carrying all the big, scary secrets of a man who didn't even know where I was. And then it came to me all of a sudden, one rather worrisome day, that no woman who knew as much about a man as I did was exactly a 'stranger' to him. And then, twice as suddenly, to great, grown-up, cool-blooded, money-staled, book-tamed me—it swept over me like a cyclone that I should never be able to decide anything more in all my life—not the width of a tinsel ribbon, not the goal of a journey, not the worth of a lover—until I'd seen the Face that belonged to the