nor try to explain the marvel that I do not pretend to understand.

I begin at the beginning--at the plunge into fairy tale and miracle that I
made, after living twenty-five years of baldest prose, when I met Helen
Winship here.

Why, I had dragged her to school on a sled when she was a child. I watched
her grow up. For years I saw her nearly every day at the State University
in the West that already seems so unreal, so far away, I loved her.

Man, I knew her face better than I knew my own! Yet when I met her here--
when I saw my promised wife, who had kissed me good-by only last June--I
did not recognise her. I looked full into her great eyes and thought she
was a stranger; hesitated even when she called my name. It's a miracle! Or
a lie, or a wild dream; or I am going crazy. The thing will not be
believed. And yet it's true.

This is my calmness! If I could but think it might be a tremendous blunder
out of which I would sometime wake into verity! But there has been no
mistake; I have not been dreaming unless I am dreaming now.

As distinctly as I see the ugly street below, I remember everything that
has befallen me since my train pulled into Jersey City last Thursday
morning. I remember as one does who is served by sharpened senses. Only
once in a fellow's lifetime can he look upon New York for the first time--
and to me New York meant Helen. Everything was vividly impressed upon my
mind.

I crossed the Cortlandt Street ferry and walked up Broadway, wondering
what Helen would say if I called before breakfast. I could scarcely wait.