Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/278

 machine. "Though I should rather like that!" The man looked up at the roof seats of the stage, as if in a habit of observation which nothing escaped; and for the appreciable moment of passing, Don returned a stare that seemed suddenly to focus on him, and stay set, as if waiting for a nod of recognition.

The machine shot forward into an opening between, the two streams of carriages; the man, still staring, disappeared with a backward jerk of the head that brought his hand up to the brim of his hat. Don said: "He thought he knew me!" But as soon as he had said it, he saw that it had been she at whom the stare had been directed; and he saw, too, that the recognition had not been welcome. He scrutinized the memory of the man's face—a clean-shaven plump face with protruding eyeballs that were round under skinny eyelids, like a bird's. He wondered to what scenes of her unknown past this unexpected apparition belonged.

She did not speak. He felt that she was separated from him by her thoughts, and he amused himself with the faces he saw and the houses he passed,—wilfully fixing his attention, with a microscopic intensity, on the intricate design of a lace curtain in a window, on the twisted scroll-work of an iron gate, on a child in a blue reefer and brown leather gaiters, on a policeman with a swollen nose that shone in the sunlight—picking out details as if with a search-light and seeing them so brilliantly that it seemed he had never seen such things before. This game carried him to the end of their ride; and when they had climbed down from the driver's box,