Page:Parnassus On Wheels - Morley - 1917.djvu/171

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Vigor at five…. If he had changed to the express…..

In a kind of fascinated horror my eye caught the list of the dead. I ran down the names. Thank God, no, Mifflin was not among them. Then I saw the last entry:


UNIDENTIFIED MAN, MIDDLE-AGED.


What if that should be the Professor?

And I suddenly felt dizzy, and for the first time in my life I fainted.

Thank goodness, no one else was in the room. The drummers had gone outside again, and no one heard me flop off the chair. I came to in a moment, my heart whirling like a spinning top. At first I did not realize what was wrong. Then my eye fell on the newspaper again. Feverishly I re-read the account, and the names of the injured, too, which I had missed before. Nowhere was there a name I knew. But the tragic words "unidentified man" danced before my eyes. Oh! if it were the Professor….

In a wave the truth burst upon me. I loved that little man: I loved him, I loved him. He had brought something new into my life, and