't bring you one real inch
nearer to what you really wanted. _Apres moi le deluge--apres ca
le deluge_--it might even come to that this time, they were both so
tired--and he viewed the prospect as a man mortally hurt might view the
gradual failing of sun and sky above him, with hopelessness complete
as a cloud in that sky, but with heart and brain too beaten now to be
surprised with either agony or fear. They must see each other--they
were neither of them quiet people who could love forever at a distance
without real hope. Great Lord, if he and Nancy could ever have one
definite basis to work on, one definite hope of money in the future no
matter how far off that was--But the present uncertainty--They couldn't
keep on like this--no two people in the world could be expected to keep
on.

Nancy. He is seeing Nancy, the way she half-lifts her head when she has
been teasing and suddenly becomes remorseful and wants him to know how
much she does love him instead.

XIII

A hot night in the Pullman---too hot to sleep in anything but a series
of uneasy drowsings and wakings. Smell of blankets and cinders and
general unwashedness--noise of clacketing wheels and a hysterical
whistle--anyhow each sweaty hour brings St. Louis and Nancy nearer.
St. _Nancy_, St. _Nancy_, St. _Nancy_, says the sleepless racket of the
wheels, but the peevish electric fan at the end of the corridor keeps
buzzing to itself like a fly caught in a trap. "And then I got married
you see--and then I got married you see--and when you get married you
aren't a free lance--you aren't a free lance--you're _settled_!"

It will have to be pretty grand news indeed that Nancy has to make up
for this last week and the buzz of the electric fan, thinks Oliver,
twisting from one side of his stuffy berth to the other like an uneasy
sardine.

XIV

"More beans, Oliver," says Mrs. Ellicott in a voice like thin syrup,
her "generous" voice. The generous voice is used whenever Mrs. Ellicott
wants to show herself a person of incredibly scrupulous fairness before
that bodiless assemblage of old women in black that constitute the They
who Say--and so it is used to Oliver nearly all the time.

"No thank you, Mrs. Ellicott." Oliver manages to look at her politely
enough as he speaks but then his eyes go straight back to Nancy and
stay there as if they wished to be considered permanent attachments.
All Oliver has been able to realize for the last two hours is the m