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FIDELIA

might have no idea that Alice also would be on the morning train, "Alice is in Rock Island now."

He arose earlier than usual in the morning and he was awakened by unconscious currents of impatience nearly an hour before he arose but he did not stir about, as he wished not to wake Fidelia; however, she also was awake and she was aware that he was.

She dressed for breakfast with him and they breakfasted, not in their room, but in the restaurant, as David suggested it "to save time." As a matter of fact both of them felt under tension this morning when he was leaving her to visit Alice and they found the tension less when they were not alone.

He reminded Fidelia, when he kissed her good-by: "To-morrow at one-thirty. We'll have our lunch at the Blackstone."

She said: "I'll meet your train. But remember you must stay later, if you'd like to."

When he was on the train for Rock Island, and it was started, he felt the tension no more; he was not at ease, yet he felt freshened. The direction of his travel drew his thoughts ahead of the train; Fidelia was not in that direction; ahead of them, where he was traveling, were Lan and Myra and Alice and he was going to join them; it seemed, sometimes, not only a journey to a meeting again of the four of them but almost it seemed a return in time to the world of the four.

Of course, he was Fidelia's husband but the others were the same—Myra and Lan now being married, as they long ago meant to do; and Alice was the same. Or, was she?