He slept and he dreamed.
He was on the train, going east, and then suddenly he was in Chicago, and even more suddenly, he was in front of the Art Institute and was going up the stairs and through the corridors to stand before the great Sunday in the Park painting.
A woman was standing by the painting and she turned and it was his fiancée.
As he watched, she grew older, aging before his eyes, and she said to him, “You’ve changed.”
He said, “No, I haven’t changed at all.”
“Your face is different. You’ve come to say goodbye.”
“No, just to see how you are,” he said.
“No, you’ve come to say goodbye.”
And as he watched, she grew even older and he felt very small, standing in front of the painting and trying to think of something to say.
Quite suddenly she was gone.
He walked out of the building and there at the bottom of the stairs were seven or eight of his friends.
As he watched, they grew older and they said the same things that she had said.
“You’ve come to say goodbye.”
“No,” he insisted. “No, I haven’t done that.”
Then he turned and ran back into the building, a young man suddenly old among old paintings.
And then he awoke.