1
HE had occupied the room on odd afternoons and evenings for a month, when a strange encounter occurred—if seeing somebody could be called an encounter.
It was a warm evening early in April, when he did not feel in the least like working....
And besides, he had been looking over the three little one-act plays which were the fruit of his month’s work, and they seemed to him trivial and silly; if this was all he could do, he had better stop trying to write plays. He was glad he had not shown them to Rose-Ann. They were caricatures of life—not without some grace, touched with a queer, decadent, heartless beauty, but essentially worthless. Why should he write things like that? One’s work was a reflection of one’s mind, of one’s life, critics said. If he had judged those plays as a critic, he would have drawn from them certain inevitable implications with respect to the author’s philosophy and mode of life; they were apparently the work of a man who did not believe in anything, and who found in reality no true satisfactions—otherwise why should he turn to this unreal realm of modernized Pierrots and Columbines for solace?
Pondering this enigma, he sat in the open window and looked out on the street. And in the distance he saw a figure that he knew—a girl.
It was Phyllis, the girl who had been at their wedding. She was coming toward him, and he recognized her with certainty despite the fact that he had seen her only once before in his life.
She was coming down the street, on the opposite side; at the corner, she crossed over, coming toward the house where Felix was sitting perched in his third story window. She came straight to the front door of that very building, and then, after the slightest interval, Felix heard the door slam. She had entered the house.
Felix concluded that he must have been mistaken as to her identity. It was somebody else who looked like Phyllis—that was all. Phyllis was still at the Teachers’ Institute; Clive had spoken only the other day of receiving a letter from her. But—
He listened; some one was coming up the second stairway. Was it she? And if so, what in the world was she doing here? It was too late to be calling on any one; besides, she had not rung the bell; she had entered, as if she belonged here. If it were Phyllis, she must be living in this house. And that was impossible.
Felix, listening at the door, heard the person, whoever it was, cross the hall—and it seemed to him that she had stopped at his door. But no—there was a jingling of keys, and he realized that the room next to his own was being unlocked. He opened his door quietly—uncertain now if he would be able to recognize Phyllis, and anxious not to make any foolish mistake. She was standing at the door, with her back to him, turning the key in the lock.
Of course it was Phyllis!
But if he were so certain, why didn’t he speak to her? He was so close that he could have touched her. Why did he let her go without a word?... She went in, and he stood staring foolishly at the closed door.
It was Phyllis, without the slightest doubt.... And yet—it would be awkward to knock at a young woman’s door at midnight and, if she turned out to be the wrong person, stammer out a lame and unconvincing apology. Why, she was probably some one whom he had seen, in his unseeing way, on the stairs a dozen times, some one who had seen him so often that his explanation of mistaken identity would sound very hollow indeed....