CHAPTER II


When Barton recovered the severed parts of his consciousness again and
tried to pull them together, he found that the Present was strangely
missing.

The Past and the Future, however, were perfectly plain to him. He was
a young stock-broker. He remembered that quite distinctly! And just as
soon as the immediate dizzy mystery had been cleared up he would, of
course, be a young stock-broker again! But between this snug
conviction as to the Past, this smug assurance as to the Future, his
mind lay tugging and shivering like a man under a split blanket. Where
in creation was the Present? Alternately he tried to yank both Past
and Future across the chilly interim.

"There was--a--green and white piazza corner," vaguely his memory
reminded him. "Never again!" some latent determination leaped to
mock him. And there had been--some sort of an argument--with a
drollish old man--concerning all homely girls in general and one
very specially homely little girl in particular. And the--very
specially homely little girl in particular had turned out to be the
old man's--daughter!--"Never again!" his original impulse hastened
to reassure him. And there had been a horseback ride--with the girl.
Oh, yes--out of some strained sense of--of parental humor--there had
been a forced horseback ride. And the weather hadbeen--hot--and
black--and then suddenly very yellow. Yellow? Yellow? Dizzily the
world began to whir through his senses--a prism of light, a fume of