There is a moment in acquaintance, in friendship, and in love, when two people become suddenly aware that they have a common past.

Days, weeks, or months have been spent in conversation, in reading, perhaps in toil and danger, and they have not thought much about it.

But one day they wake up to the fact that these little or great things bind them, as forming the portion of their lives that have touched; and as they talk over the incidents they remember they feel unaccountably drawn to each other by the past.

Margaret and Claudius knew this on the first evening they spent together on shore.

The confusion of landing, the custom-house, the strange quarters in the great hotel--all composed a drop-curtain shutting off the ocean scene, and ending thus an episode of their life-drama.