Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/189

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THE IDEALIST
177

of strange peoples, on a continent of crowded houses and stone streets that was barren of grass and trees or the soil in which they could take root or the natural light to grow them. He saw Margaret and the University and the life he had lived, as far from him as Penelope and Ithaca were from the Grecian wanderer of the school books when he looked back at the memory of his home from the lurid half-light of Hades. He fell asleep, construing to the clackety-clack of the car-wheels of his railway ride: "Then answering him—prosphē polumētis Odusseus—O King Alcinous—pantōn arideikete laōn—truly it is a beautiful thing—truly it is a beautiful thing——" Dexter barked. He looked up from his book to see a girl coming toward him through the trees.


He woke to a sunshine which made him feel that, at least, he was still in the old familiar world, though in such a bewilderingly new part of it; and he woke to find Pittsey already planning their housekeeping with an almost "bridal enthusiasm," as he himself said.

That enthusiasm carried them through the remainder of the week undepressed by the size of the city which they had undertaken to carry by assault. It found them three rooms on the top floor of an old brown-stone house that had once been a family residence, in one of those streets leading into Fifth Avenue which have long since been overtaken by the encroachments of the business district. A barber had the basement. A publisher of cheap music occupied the ground floor.