Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/37

 ingness, and the nothingness of thingness. My alarms, however, were in vain. Scarcely had we entered the car when Reva perceived a bevy of girls of her own age. She forsook us at once, with a smile and a bow, and hastened over to her fair friends, where presently I saw her exhibiting, to an apparently appreciative audience, the piece of mechanism to me such a mystery.

Utis became engaged in conversation with some friends; and I was left, for a while, to my own reflections. It might. be the re-action after the mental strain involved in the reception of so many novel ideas, but seldom have I felt so intensely depressed. I felt humiliated in my own esteem. I, the college-trained, the much-travelled man, the leading spirit of my set; I, whose knowledge was regarded by a fond mother and admiring sister as almost encyclopedic,—I to shrink from the conversation of a young girl, through fear of betraying my gross ignorance!

My meditations were broken in upon, at this point, by a silvery laugh proceeding from the corner to which Reva had betaken herself. Could they be laughing at me? Had she discovered my ignorance, even through my veil of silence, and was showing me up to her companions? A furtive glance in that direction re-assured me. They evidently were paying no attention to me. Such is the inconsistency of man, that, for a moment, I actually felt aggrieved at what at first gave me such relief,—Reva's discovery of more interesting companionship than mine.

Just then the train slackened its pace. Utis and I alighted amid a crowd of passengers, among whom I lost sight of Reva; and presently we two were left alone on the platform, giving a last glance to the train as it vanished round a distant curve.