[Illustration: She telephoned that she was going to remain to dinner with Allison; and they enjoyed a two hour chat of many things]
Homeward again in the starlit night, still in that whirl of exultation. It was somewhat chillier now, and Allison bundled her into the machine with rough tenderness. She felt the thrill of him as he sat beside her, and the firm strength with which he controlled the swiftly speeding runabout, was part her strength. They were kindred spirits, these two, soaring above the affairs of earth in the serene complacency of those who make trifles of vastness itself. They did not talk much, for they had not much to talk about. The details of a scheme so comprehensive as Allison’s were not things to be explained, they were things to be seen in a vision. Once she asked him about the bringing of the foreign railroads into the combination, and he told her that this would only be accomplished by a political upheaval, which would take place next month, and would probably involve the whole of Europe. It was another detail; and it seemed quite natural. She was so interested that he told her all about his foreign visitors.
In the Park, Allison stopped at the little outlook house where they had climbed on that snowy night, and they stood there, with the stars above and the trees below and the twinkling lights stretching out to the horizon, all alone above the world of civilisation. Below sounded the clang of street cars, and far off to the left, high in the air, there gleamed the lights of a curving L train. That was a part of Allison’s world which he had long since conquered, a part which he already held in the hollow of his hand; and the fact that every moving thing which clung upon a track in all this vast panorama was under his dominion, served only to illustrate and make plain the marvel of the accomplishment which was now under way. Beyond that dim horizon lay another and still another, and in them all, wherever things moved or were transported, the lift of Allison’s finger was to start and stop the wheels, to the uttermost confines of the earth! Oh, it was wonderful; wonderful! And she was part of it!
It was there that he proposed to her. It did not surprise her. She had known it when they had entered the Park, and that this was the place.