this. It had been going on for years, she could
understand that now. Why should she only see it in this quiet, silent,
neutral moment?

An impalpable emanation of feeling reached her from the other woman. She
had a divination that it was pain. Perhaps Eugenia was also suddenly
realizing that she had grown irrevocably apart from an old friend.

The old tenderness felt for the girl Eugenia had been, by the girl
Marise had been, looked wistfully down the years at the end.

Marise opened her arms wide and took Eugenia into them for a close,
deeply moved embrace.

"Good-bye, Eugenia," she said, with sadness.

"Good-bye, Marise," said Eugenia, looking at her strangely.

* * * * *

Neale came back now, frankly consulting his watch with Neale's bluntness
in such matters. "Train's due in a minute or two," he said. "Where's Mr.
Welles?"

Marise said, "Over there, with Paul. I'll go tell them."

She found them both, hand in hand, sitting on the edge of the truck
which carried the leather-covered boxes and wicker basket-trunks, bound
for Biskra or beyond, or Java; and the square department-store trunk
bound for Maple Avenue, Macon, Georgia.

"Mother," said Paul, "Mr. Welles has promised me that he'll come up and
visit us summers."

"There's no house in the world where you'll be more welcome," said
Marise with all her heart, holding out her hand.

Mr. Welles shook it hard, and held it in both his. As the train whistled
screamingly at the crossing, he looked earnestly into her face and tried
to tell her something, but the words would not come.

As she read in his pale old face and steady eyes what he would have
said, Marise cried out to herself that there do not exist in the world
any things more halting and futile than words. She put her arms around
his neck and kissed him. "Good-bye, dear Mr. Welles," was all she said,
but in the clinging of his old arms about her, and in the quivering,
shining face he showed as they moved down the platform together, she
knew that he too had not needed words.

Paul clung to his hand till the last moment, gazing up at him
constantly, silently. Marise looked down on the little boy's tanned,
freckled, sober face and strained, rapidly winking eyes, and had the
intuition, "This is one of the moments Paul will never forget. He will
always be able to shut his eyes and see this old Don Quixote setting
forth." With a rush of her old, jealous, possessive mother