Page:Possession (1926).pdf/74

 For a moment Clarence was baffled. He understood suddenly that this new strange world was more remote, more unfamiliar than he had imagined. It was not perhaps made out of factories and roaring furnaces. The discovery increased his awkwardness and in some strange way distended the glamour with which he surrounded her. He struggled for words.

"I'm going to spend Christmas with the Setons," he said. "Probably you know them. They've always lived in the Town."

The woman frowned slightly. "Seton?" she repeated, "Seton?" Then it appeared that the light dawned upon her. "To be sure. . . . I know. . . . They own a corset factory. . . . But they're new people. Yes, I know who they are although I don't know them."

She made the statement simply and without a trace of condescension. She made it as a simple observation. If she had said, "I know who the King of England is . . . but I don't know him," the intonation, the inflection would have been identical. She had answered his question, but she had answered it more profoundly than she knew, more profoundly, more tragically than even Clarence knew until years afterward. "I know who they are although I don't know them."

Before the eyes of Clarence there rose suddenly the image of May Seton, good-natured, trivial, blonde, commonplace. It was almost as if she had entered the train by some obscure miracle and stood there beside the mysterious stranger, awkward, silly, ungainly.

The woman was rising now. "I must go back to my seat," she said. "It isn't fair to keep the others waiting." She pulled the stole of black fox about her handsome shoulders and lowered the veil. "Thank you," she said, "for saving a poor helpless traveler from boredom."

And with that she closed the adventure.

When he returned to his seat, he found her sitting absorbed in