Seven o'clock!
What on earth could have happened?
Visions of possible disasters crossed his mind: a train wreck and a cab accident; or perhaps she was ill and was not coming. There would be no way of communicating with him, and he would have to go on waiting. Or, perhaps, she had repented of her consent to make the evening glorious for him. The suspense was really terrible. There was nothing to do except to watch the newsboys cheerily gathering the magazines and papers together into piles, and shuttering the bookstall. He saw people running for trains, and whenever the hiss of steam announced the arrival of another train, he hurried to the wicket-gate to peer into the recesses of the crowd that struggled through it, in the hope of seeing her face a second before she actually appeared in person.
At five past seven he was still moodily waiting.
It was cruel of her to keep him dallying with patience like this. She must have known that he would be waiting for her on the moment. How little she cared if she could not even be punctual to the time they had arranged. He began to feel stale and dusty, as if he had been in his evening-dress for years.
He made up his mind to be very angry with her when she came.
And lo! she was at his side: more wonderful than ever, so wonderful that he scarcely recognized her. She had come through the crowd at the wicket-gate, floating towards him, it seemed, like a cloud of filmy, fluffy white. Her face was radiantly flushed and smiling, and he sprang towards her with a cry of relief and gladness.
"Here I am," she announced. "I wondered if you'd be here." (As if he had not been waiting heart in mouth, for all that time.)
She wore no hat, but her hair was done in a way that he had never seen before. It seemed to change her strangely. If anything, it made her look more beautiful, as it rose in little waves from her forehead and fell about her ears in wayward threads of sparkling brown. And there was a black velvet ribbon that went in and out among the glory of her hair.