the lights blinked and winked, and his mind swung onward in response to
the physical jar.

Åbo was obliterated. He was on board a ship--a ship ploughing her way
through the ice-fields as she neared Stockholm; salt sea air flicked his
nostrils, he heard the broken ice tearing the keel like a million files,
he was sensible of the crucial sensation--the tremendous quiver--as the
vessel slipped from her bondage into the cradle of the sea, a sentient
thing welcoming her own element!

The heart of the dreamer leaped to that strange sensation. He drew a
long, sharp breath, and sat up, suddenly awake. It was over and done
with--the coldness, the rigor, the region of ice bonds! The fingers of
the future beckoned to him; the promises of the future lapped his ears
as the waves had lapped the ship's sides.

He looked about him, at first excitedly, then confusedly, then a little
shamedfacedly, for we are always involuntarily shamed at being tricked
by our emotions into a false conception. Drawing his hand from his
coat-pocket, he stretched himself with an assumption of ease, as though
he saw and recognized the twinkle in the electric lamps and
spontaneously rose to its demands.

The train was flying forward at unabated speed. Outside, the raw January
air was clinging in a film to the carriage window; inside, the dim light
and overheated air made an artificial atmosphere, enervating or
stimulating according to the traveller's gifts. To this solitary voyager
stimulation was obviously the effect produced, for, try as he might
to cheat the inquisitive lamps, interest in every detail of his
surroundings was portrayed in his face, in the poise of his head, the