Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/260



E was on the train at last homeward bound. Gazing out of the window of the car he was trying to find where he stood. He must be in love. He faced the remarkable fact that he had spent a whole week in Independence at an expensive hotel, and squandered every cent of the small fee he had received for his address in what would be otherwise a perfectly senseless manner.

Yet he felt rich. He was sure he had never spent money so wisely and economically in his life. Beyond the shadow of a doubt he was in love,—desperately and hopelessly committed to this one girl for life. He said it in his heart with a shout of triumph. Life was not a sterile desert of brute work. It was true. Love the magician of the ages, lived in this world of lost faiths and dead religions.

Now that he was leaving he felt a tingling impulse to leap off the train, cut across the fields and run back to her—and he laughed aloud, just as the train came to a sudden stop, and everybody looked at him and smiled.

A drummer looked up from a novel he was reading and said,

"It is a fine day, partner, isn't it?"

"Never saw a finer," answered Gaston with another laugh.

He dwelt long and greedily on the consciousness of