to speak, to know each other any more, and the briefness of their days, the destiny of man, was in that instant greeting and farewell.
Therefore, in this way, they passed and vanished, the coaches slipped away from them until again they came up level with the cab of the other locomotive. And now the young engineer no longer sat in his high window with a determined grin, and with his hard blue eyes fixed on the rail. Rather, he stood now in the door, his engine banging away deliberately, slowed down, bucking and rocking loosely as they passed. His attitude was that of a man who has just given up a race. He had turned to shout something at his fireman who stood there balanced, arms akimbo, black and grinning, as they moved up by them. The engineer had one gloved hand thrust out against the cab to support him, he held the other on his hip and he was grinning broadly at them, with solid teeth edged with one molar of bright gold—a fine, free, generous, and good-humoured smile, which said more plainly than any words could do: “Well, it’s over, now! You fellows win! But you’ll have to admit we gave you a run for your money while it lasted!”
Then they drew away and lost the train for ever. And presently their own train came in to Newark, where it stopped. And suddenly, as Eugene was looking at some negroes working there with picks and shovels on the track beside the train, one looked up and spoke quietly to the fat porter, without surprise or any greeting, as casually and naturally as a man could speak to someone who has been in the same room with him for hours.
“When you comin’back dis way, boy?” he said.
“I’ll be comin’back again on Tuesday,” said the porter.
“Did you see dat ole long gal yet? Did you tell huh what I said?”
“Not yet,” the porter said, “but I’ll be seein’huh fo’long! I’ll tell yo’what she says.”
“I’ll be lookin’fo’you,” said the other negro.
“Don’t fo’git now,” said the fat black porter, chuckling; and the train started, the man calmly returned to work again; and this was all. What that astounding meeting of two black atoms underneath the skies, that casual incredible conversation meant, he never knew; but he did not forget it.
And the whole memory of this journey, of this race between the trains, of the negroes, of the passengers who came to life like magic, crowding and laughing at the windows, and particularly of the girl and of the vein upon
