“How Travers would laugh if he saw me walking in Central Park!” he thought. “He’d probably ask me when I’d come over from Germany,” he added. And then, looking ahead, a thing Van Squibber rarely did, by-the-way—for you can’t always tell by looking ahead what may happen to you—his eyes were confronted by a more or less familiar back.

“Dear me!” he said. “If that isn’t Eleanor Huyler’s back, whose back is it, by Jove?”

Insensibly Van Squibber quickened his pace. This was also a thing he rarely did. “Haste is bad form,” he had once said to Travers, who, on leaving Delmonico’s at 7.20, seemed anxious to catch the 7.10 train for Riverdale. Insensibly quickening his pace, he soon found himself beside the owner of the back, and, as his premonitions had told him, it was Eleanor Huyler.

“Good-morning,” he said.

“Why, Mr. Van Squibber!” she replied, with a terrified smile. “You here?”

“Well,” returned Van Squibber, not anxious to commit himself, “I think so, though I assure you, Miss Huyler, I am not at all certain. I seem to be here, but I must confess I am not quite myself this morning. My man—”

“Yes—I know,” returned the girl, hastily. “I’ve heard of him. He is your alter ego.”

“I had not noticed it,” said Van Squibber, somewhat nonplussed. “I think he is English, though he may be Italian, as you suggest. But,” he added, to change the subject, “you seem disturbed. Your smile is a terrified smile, as has been already noted.”

“It is,” said Miss Huyler, looking anxiously about her.

“And may I ask why?” asked Van Squibber, politely—for to do things politely was Van Squibber’s ambition.

“I—I—well, really, Mr. Van Squibber,” the girl replied, “I am always anxious when you are about. The fact is, you know, the things that happen when you are around are always so very extraordinary. I came here for a quiet walk, but now that you have appeared I am quite certain that something dramatic is about to occur. You see—you—you have turned up so often at the—what I may properly call, I think, the nick of time, and so rarely at any other time, that I feel as though some disaster were impending which you alone can avert.”

“And what then?” said Van Squibber, proudly. “If I am here, what bodes disaster?”

“That is the question I am asking myself,” returned Miss Huyler, whose growing anxiety was more or less painful to witness. “Can your luck hold out? Will your ability as an averter of danger hold out? In short, Mr. Van Squibber, are you infallible?”

The question came to Van Squibber like a flash of lightning out of a clear sky. It was too pertinent. Had he not often wondered himself as to his infallibility? Had he not only the day before said to Travers, “You can’t always tell in advance just how a thing you are going into may turn out, even though you have been through that thing many times, and think you do.”

“I do lead a dramatic life,” he said, quietly, hoping by a show of serenity to reassure her. “But,” he added, proudly, “I am, after all, Van Squibber; I am here to do whatever is sent me to do. I am not a fatalist, but I regard myself as the chosen instrument of fate—or something. So far, I have not failed. On the basis of averages, I am not likely to fail now. Fate, or something, has chosen me to succeed.”

“That is true,” said Eleanor—“quite true; but there are exceptions to all rules, and I would rather you would fail to rescue some other girl from a position of peril than myself.”

That Miss Huyler’s words were prophetic, the unhappy Van Squibber was to realize, and that soon, for almost as they spoke the cheeks of both were blanched by a dreadful roar in the bushes beside the path upon which they walked.