The Midnight Passenger | Page 4

with a gleam of vaguely timid inquiry. The delicately moulded arm and
slender hand were revealed, as with a graceful sweep the lady lifted her
rustling drapery and disappeared within the doors of the one foreign
café lingering reluctant on Union Square.
With a sigh, Randall Clayton turned back toward the south, for a hasty
glance at a clock face told him that there was left him but fifteen
minutes wherein to reach the Bank, before the brazen bells would clang
high noon. His heart was beating strangely as he retraced his steps, for
the ichor of young blood was boiling in his veins at last.
He was lost in a clouding day dream, as he recrossed Fourth Avenue
and only dimly saw the foxy face of his office boy flash out of the
jostling crowd on the corner before he darted over.
As he resolutely stemmed the tide pouring eastward, he had turned
down Broadway before he realized that there had been a half smile of
recognition on those rich red Hungarian lips, a wordless message in the
dark splendors of the gleaming eyes.
Could it be? They had lingered but a few moments together gazing on

the pictured glories of the distant Danube. Clayton felt that some new
influence had suddenly loosened all the pent-up longings of his ardent
nature. He was above all the vulgar pretenses of the "boulevardier." He
now realized in a single moment the hollow loneliness of a life made
up only of so many monthly pay days and so many dull returns of the
four unheeded seasons. For his life had only been a heavy pathway of
toil up an inclined plane of manifold resistances.
He recalled, how on his one European voyage, the distant gleam of a
single silver sail far out on the blue rim of the pathless ocean had
suddenly broken in upon the eternal loneliness of that watery waste.
And now, in all the peopled loneliness of all New York--hitherto a
human desert for him--the glance of these same alien eyes had suddenly
awakened him to yearnings for another life.
He was half way down the bustling Broadway to the bank before he
dared ask himself if the bright, shy glances of these unforgotten eyes
were meant for him.
"Perhaps," he muttered, and then his whole nature stifled the unworthy
suggestion. No! On that fair face only truth and honor were mirrored.
He was left alone absently checking up his deposit list before he
recalled all the proud and womanly bearing of the beautiful unknown.
There was in her every motion the distinction of an isolation from the
contact of the meaner world! How hungrily he had watched her onward
path he only knew now.
And, with a secret pride, he recalled how daintily, like the swift
Camilla, she had sped onward through all those human billows heaving
to and fro, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot."
He pocketed all his deposit slips, then glanced mechanically at the
bank-book's entries, and wearily parried the badinage of the
bright-faced young bank-teller.
Clayton slowly wandered over toward Taylor's, and he was still lost in
his day-dream when he joined his chum, Arthur Ferris, finding the
modest feast already on the table.
"By Jove, old man! You're 'way behind time," began the nervous
lawyer. "I've got to hustle. I leave for Detroit on the evening train."
"What's up, Arthur?" demanded the laggard.
"I've just had a wire from Worthington," seriously replied his
room-mate. "He is going to take a trip around the world, via San

Francisco. It seems that Miss Alice's health is precarious. And, the
'Chief' is going to put me in special charge of all his personal interests
during this stay of six or nine months. I am to go out for my
instructions, travel on to the Pacific Coast with them, and then,
returning, inspect all the cattle ranches on my way back to Detroit."
"I'm right glad to hear it, Arthur," said Clayton, warmly grasping his
friend's hand. "I know Hugh Worthington's mental processes well! He
wants some one to watch over all his home business machinery while
he makes the grand tour. And he has selected one not in the local ring.
It means a substantial promotion for you."
"I fondly hope so," replied Ferris. "He must have some such ideas, for
I'm to turn over all my New York matters here to the senior in our firm,
and I'm also to have a special power of attorney from the Chief. The
annual election comes off before his return."
The two young men had finished their luncheon before Clayton thought
of the loneliness which his chum's absence would entail upon him.
There were many matters of detail to talk over, and Clayton hastened
his return to the office