“Did she?” said Leighton.  “Do you believe everything as easily as that?”

“The heart believes easily,” said Lewis.

“Eh?  Where’d you get that?”

“I suppose I read it somewhere.  I think it is true.  She told me my fortune.”

“Told you your fortune, did she?  I thought I was missing something when I snored the hours away instead of talking to that bright old lady.  Fortunes are silly things.  Do you remember what she told you?”

“Yes,” said Lewis, “I think I remember every word.  She said, ’Child of love art thou.  At thy birth was thy mother rent asunder, for thou wert conceived too near the heart——­’”

“Stop!”

Lewis looked up.  His father’s face was livid.  His breast heaved as though he gasped for air.  Then he clenched his fists.  Lewis saw the veins on his forehead swell as he fought for self-mastery.  He calmed himself deliberately; then slowly he dropped his face in his hands.

“Some day,” he said in a voice so low that Lewis could hardly hear the words, “I shall tell you of your mother.  Not now.”

Gloom, like a tangible presence, filled the car.  It pressed down upon Lewis.  He felt it, but in his heart he knew that for him the day was a glad day.  The train started.  He leaned far out of a window.  The evening breeze was blowing from the east.  To his keen nostrils came a faint breath of the sea.  When he drew his head in again, the twinkle he had already learned to watch for was back in his father’s eyes.

“What do you smell, boy?”

“I smell the sea,” said Lewis.

“How do you know?  How old were you when you made your first voyage?”

“Don’t you know?”

Leighton shook his head.

Lewis, looking at his father with wondering eyes, regretted the spoken question.

“I was three years old.  I suppose I remember the smell of the sea, though it seems as if I couldn’t possibly.  I remember the funnel of the steamer, though.”

“Seems like looking back on a quite separate life, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Lewis, nodding, “it does.”

“Of course it does, and in that fact you’ve got the germ of an individual philosophy.  Every man who goes through the stress of life has need of an individual philosophy.”

“What’s yours, sir?”

“I was going to tell you.  Life, to me, is like this train, a lot of sections and a lot of couplings.  When you’re through with a car, side-track it and—­yank out the coupling.  Like all philosophies, this one has its flaw.  Once in a while your soul looks out of the window and sees some long-forgotten, side-tracked car beckoning to be coupled on again.  If you try to go back and pick it up, you’re done.  Never look back, boy; never look back.  Live ahead even if you’re only living a compensation.”

“What’s a compensation?” asked Lewis.

“A compensation,” said Leighton thoughtfully, “is a thing that doesn’t quite compensate.”