“Let go of me!” retorted Smith.

“Hush!  Wait!  It’s certainly creeping over me.”

“What’s creeping over you?”

“You know what I mean.  I am experiencing that strange feeling that all—­ er—­all this—­has happened before.”

“All what?—­confound it!”

“All this! My standing, on a hot summer day, in the infernal din of some great city; and—­and I seem to recall it vividly—­after a fashion—­ the blazing sun, the stifling odor of the pavements; I seem to remember that very hackman over there sponging the nose of his horse—­even that pushcart piled up with peaches!  Smith!  What is this maddeningly elusive memory that haunts me—­haunts me with the peculiar idea that it has all occurred before?...  Do you know what I mean?”

“I’ve just admitted to you that everybody has that sort of fidget occasionally, and there’s no reason to stand on your hindlegs about it.  Come on or we’ll miss our train.”

But Beekman Brown remained stock still, his youthful and attractive features puckered in a futile effort to seize the evanescent memories that came swarming—­gnatlike memories that teased and distracted.

“It’s as if the entire circumstances were strangely familiar,” he said; “as though everything that you and I do and say had once before been done and said by us under precisely similar conditions—­somewhere—­sometime.”

“We’ll miss that boat at the foot of Forty-second Street,” cut in Smith impatiently.  “And if we miss the boat we lose our train.”

Brown gazed skyward.

“I never felt this feeling so strongly in all my life,” he muttered; “it’s—­it’s astonishing.  Why, Smith, I knew you were going to say that.”

“Say what?” demanded Smith.

“That we would miss the boat and the train.  Isn’t it funny?”

“Oh, very.  I’ll say it again sometime if it amuses you; but, meanwhile, as we’re going to that week-end at the Carringtons we’d better get into a taxi and hustle for the foot of West Forty-second Street.  Is there anything very funny in that?”

“I knew that, too.  I knew you’d say we must take a taxi!” insisted Brown, astonished at his own “clairvoyance.”

“Now, look here,” retorted Smith, thoroughly vexed; “up to five minutes ago you were reasonable.  What the devil’s the matter with you, Beekman Brown?”

“James Vanderdynk Smith, I don’t know.  Good Heavens!  I knew you were going to say that to me, and that I was going to answer that way!”

“Are you coming or are you going to talk foolish on this broiling curbstone the rest of the afternoon?” inquired Smith, fiercely.

“Jim, I tell you that everything we’ve done and said in the last five minutes we have done and said before—­somewhere—­perhaps on some other planet; perhaps centuries ago when you and I were Romans and wore togas——­”

“Confound it!  What do I care,” shouted Smith, “whether we were Romans and wore togas?  We are due this century at a house party on this planet.  They expect us on this train.  Are you coming?  If not—­kindly relax that crablike clutch on my elbow before partial paralysis ensues.”