Life has always seemed to me something like a serial story would be if they printed above each instalment a synopsis of succeeding chapters.”
Mary laughed merrily.
“Bob Ames told us once,” she said, “of a funny thing you did. It was when you and he were on a train in the South, and you got off at a town where you hadn’t intended to stop just because the brakeman hung up a sign in the end of the car with the name of the next station on it.”
“I remember,” said Ives. “That ‘next station’ has been the thing I’ve always tried to get away from.”
“I know it,” said Mary. “And you’ve been very foolish. I hope you didn’t find what you wanted not to find, or get off at the station where there wasn’t any, or whatever it was you expected wouldn’t happen to you during the three years you’ve been away.”
“There was something I wanted before I went away,” said Ives.
Mary looked in his eyes clearly, with a slight, but perfectly sweet smile.
“There was,” she said. “You wanted me. And you could have had me, as you very well know.”
Without replying, Ives let his gaze wander slowly about the room. There had been no change in it since last he had been in it, three years before. He vividly recalled the thoughts that had been in his mind then. The contents of that room were as fixed, in their way,
