burned his clothes, and Donaldson brought a new outfit? Why did
Donaldson, for all his requests, never bring a razor, so that when
they struck the railroad, miles from anywhere, they were both full
bearded?

He brought himself up sharply. He had allowed his imagination to
run away with him. He had been depicting a flight and no one who
knew David could imagine him in flight.

Nevertheless he was conscious of a new uneasiness and anxiety.
When David recovered sufficiently he would go to Norada, as he had
told Elizabeth, and there he would find the Donaldsons, and clear
up the things that bothered him. After that--

He thought of Elizabeth, of her sweetness and sanity. He remembered
her at the theater the evening before, lost in its fictitious
emotions, its counterfeit drama. He had felt moved to comfort her,
when he found her on the verge of tears.

"Just remember, they're only acting," he had said.

"Yes. But life does do things like that to people."

"Not often. The theater deals in the dramatic exceptions to life.
You and I, plain bread and butter people, come to see these things
because we get a sort of vicarious thrill out of them."

"Doesn't anything ever happen to the plain bread and butter people?"

"A little jam, sometimes. Or perhaps they drop it, butter side