Such a committee, feeling no emotion (except perhaps relief) at seeing me depart, may be useful.  Not so with friends and loved ones.  Useful as they may be in the great crises of life, they are but disturbing elements in the small ones.  Those who would die for us seldom check our trunks.

By this I do not mean to imply that either of the two delightful creatures who came to the Pennsylvania Terminal to bid me good-by would die for me.  That one has lived for me and that both attempt to regulate my conduct is more than enough.  Hardly had I alighted from my taxicab, hardly had the redcap seized my suitcase, when, with sweet smiles and a twinkling of daintily shod feet, they came.  Fancy their having arrived ahead of me!  Fancy their having come like a pair of angels through the rain to see me off!  Enough to turn a man’s head!  It did turn mine; and I noticed that, as they approached, the heads of other men were turning too.

Flattered to befuddlement, I greeted them and started with them automatically in the direction of the concourse, forgetting entirely the driver of my taxicab, who, however, took in the situation and set up a great shout—­whereat I returned hastily and overpaid him.

This accomplished, I rejoined my companions and, with a radiant dark-haired girl at one elbow and a blonde, equally delectable, at the other, moved across the concourse.

How gay they were as we strolled along!  How amusing were their prophecies of adventures destined to befall me in the South.  Small wonder that I took no thought of whither I was going.

Presently, having reached the wall at the other side of the great vaulted chamber, we stopped.

“Which train, boss?” asked the porter who had meekly followed.

Train?  I had forgotten about trains.  The mention of the subject distracted my attention for the moment from the Loreleien, stirred my drugged sense of duty, and reminded me that I had trunks to check.

My suggestion that I leave them briefly for this purpose was lightly brushed aside.

“Oh, no!” they cried.  “We shall go with you.”

I gave in at once—­one always does with them—­and inquired of the porter the location of the baggage room.  He looked somewhat fatigued as he replied: 

“It’s away back there where we come from, boss.”

It was a long walk; in a garden, with no train to catch, it would have been delightful.

“Got your tickets?” suggested the porter as we passed the row of grilled windows.  He had evidently concluded that I was irresponsible.

As I had them, we continued on our way, and presently achieved the baggage room, where they stood talking and laughing, telling me of the morning’s shopping expedition—­hat-hunting, they called it—­in the rain.  I fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman, perhaps divining that I had become a little bit distrait and that I had business to transact, rapped smartly on the iron counter with his punch and demanded: