If it was, it was because she made it so. However, he looked at it politely. It had been cut from a material he was unfamiliar with, a material seemingly compounded of cotton candy, sea foam and snow. There was no limit anymore to the syntheses that could be created by the miracle-fiber manufacturers — nor, apparently, to the tall tales that could be created by young girls. “I suppose you traveled here by time machine,” he said.
“Yes. My father invented one.”
He looked at her closely. He had never seen such a guileless countenance. “And do you come here often?”
“Oh, yes. This is my favorite space-time coordinate. I stand here for hours sometimes and look and look and look. Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today, you.”
“But how can there be a yesterday,” Mark asked, “if you always return to the same point in time?”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” she said. “The reason is because the machine is affected by the passage of time the same as anything else, and you have to set it back every twenty-four hours if you want to maintain exactly the same coordinate. I never do because I much prefer a different day each time I come back.”
“Doesn’t your father ever come with you?”
Overhead, a v of geese was drifting lazily by, and she watched it for some time before she spoke. “My father is an invalid now,” she said finally. “He’d like very much to come if he only could. But I tell him all about what I see,” she added hurriedly, “and it’s almost the same as if he really came. Wouldn’t you say it was?”
There was an eagerness about the way she was looking at him that touched his heart. “I’m sure it is,” he said; then: “It must be wonderful to own a time machine.”
She nodded solemnly. “They’re a boon to people who like to stand on pleasant leas. In the twenty-third century there aren’t very many pleasant leas left.”
He smiled. “There aren’t very many of them left in the twentieth. I guess you could say that this one is sort of a collector’s item. I’ll have to visit it more often.”
“Do you live near here?” she asked.
“I’m staying in a cabin about three miles back. I’m supposed to be on vacation, but it’s not much of one. My wife was called to jury duty and couldn’t come with me, and since I couldn’t postpone it, I’ve ended up being a sort of reluctant Thoreau. My name is Mark Randolph.”
“I’m Julie,” she said. “Julie Danvers.”
The name suited her. The same way the white dress suited her — the way the blue sky suited her, and the hill and the September wind. Probably she lived in the little hamlet in the woods, but it did not really matter. If she wanted to pretend she was from the future, it was all right with him. All that really mattered was the way he had felt when he had first seen her, and the tenderness that came over him every time he gazed upon her gentle face. “What kind of work do you do, Julie?” he asked. “Or are you still in school?”
“I’m studying to be a secretary,” she said. She took a half step and made a pretty pirouette and clasped her hands before her. “I shall just love to be a secretary,” she went on. “It must be simply marvelous working in a big important office and taking down what important people say. Would you like me to be your secretary, Mr. Randolph?”
“I’d like it very much,” he said. “My wife was my secretary once — before the war. That’s how we happened to meet.” Now, why had he said that? he wondered.
“Was she a good secretary?”
“The very best. I was sorry to lose her; but then when I lost her in one sense, I gained her in another, so I guess you could hardly call that losing her.”
“No, I guess you couldn’t. Well, I must be getting back now, Mr. Randolph. Dad will be wanting to hear about all the things I saw, and I’ve got to fix his supper.”
“Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Probably. I’ve been coming here every day. Goodbye now, Mr. Randolph.”
“Goodbye, Julie,” he said.
He watched her run lightly down the hill and disappear into the grove of sugar maples where, two hundred and forty years hence, Two Thousand and Fortieth Street would be. He smiled. What a charming child, he thought. It must be thrilling to have such an irrepressible sense of wonder, such an enthusiasm for life. He could appreciate the two qualities all the more fully because he had been denied them. At twenty be had been a solemn young man working his way through law school; at twenty-four he had had his own practice, and, small though it had been, it had occupied him completely — well, not quite completely. When he had married Anne, there had been a brief interim during which making a living had lost some of its immediacy. And then, when the war had come along, there had been another interim — a much longer one this time — when making a living had seemed a remote and sometimes even a contemptible pursuit. After his return to civilian life, though, the immediacy had returned with a vengeance, the more so because he now had a son as well as a wife to support, and he had been occupied ever since, except for the four vacation weeks he had recently been allowing himself each year, two of which he spent with Anne and Jeff at a resort of their choosing and two of which he spent with Anne, after Jeff returned to college, in their cabin by the lake. This year, though, he was spending the second two alone. Well, perhaps not quite alone.
His pipe had gone out some time ago, and he had not even noticed. He lighted it again, drawing deeply to thwart the wind, then he descended the hill and started back through the woods toward the cabin. The autumnal equinox had come and the days were appreciably shorter. This one was very nearly done, and the dampness of evening had already begun to pervade the hazy air.
He walked slowly, and the sun had set by the time he reached the lake. It was a small lake, but a deep one, and the trees came down to its edge. The cabin stood some distance back from the shore in a stand of pines, and a winding path connected it with the pier. Behind it a gravel drive led to a dirt road that gave access to the highway. His station wagon stood by the back door, ready to whisk him back to civilization at a moment’s notice.
He prepared and ate a simple supper in the kitchen, then went into the living room to read. The generator in the shed hummed on and off, but otherwise the evening was unsullied by the usual sounds the ears of modern man are heir to. Selecting an anthology of American poetry from the well-stocked bookcase by the fireplace, he sat down and thumbed through it to “Afternoon on a Hill.” He read the treasured poem three times, and each time he read it he saw her standing there in the sun, her hair dancing in the wind, her dress swirling like gentle snow around her long and lovely legs; and a lump came into his throat, and he could not swallow.
He returned the book to the shelf and went out and stood on the rustic porch and filled and lighted his pipe. He forced himself to think of Anne, and presently her face came into focus — the firm but gentle chin, the warm and compassionate eyes with that odd hint of fear in them that he had never been able to analyze, the still-soft cheeks, the gentle smile — and each attribute was made more compelling by the memory of her vibrant light-brown hair and her tall, lithe gracefulness. As was always the case when he thought of her, he found himself marveling at her agelessness, marveling how she could have continued down through the years as lovely as she had been that long-ago morning when he had looked up, startled, and seen her standing timidly before his desk. It was inconceivable that a mere twenty years later he could be looking forward eagerly to a tryst with an over-imaginative girl who was young enough to be his daughter. Well, he wasn’t — not really. He had been momentarily swayed — that was all. For a moment his emotional equilibrium had deserted him, and he had staggered. Now his feet were back under him where they belonged, and the world had returned to its sane and sensible orbit.