§ 1
Spring burst upon New York with a warm breath and a rush of green. The gentle season folded the city lovingly in its arms. Everywhere were the evidences of its magic presence. The trees shimmered with green, shrubbery that peeped through iron fence grillings vigorously put forth new leaves, patches of grass in the areaways of brownstone houses turned freshly verdant, hotels upon the Avenue took on a brave and festal aspect with blooming flower-boxes in their windows, florist shops exhaled delicate perfumes of field flowers and turned gay the sidewalks before their doors with rows of potted loveliness, the Park became an elysian field of soft invitingness, with emerald glades and vistas of enchantment like tapestries of Fontainebleau. Spring was evident in women’s hats, in shop windows, in the crowded tops of lumbering three-horse buses, in the reappearance of hansom cabs, in open automobiles, in the smiling faces of men and women, in the elastic step of pedestrians. Spring had come to New York; the very walls of houses and pavements of the streets flashed back joyously the golden caressing radiance of the sun.
Walking downtown to her office on an early morning through all this exhilarating loveliness, stepping along with almost a skip in her gait and a heart that danced to her brisk strides, Jeannette felt rather than saw a man’s shadow at her elbow and turned to find Roy Beardsley beside her, lifting his hat, and smiling at her with his tight little mouth, his blue eyes twinkling.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her fingers pressed hard against her heart. She had been thinking of him almost from the moment she had left home.
“Morning.... You don’t mind if I walk along? ... It’s a wonderful morning; isn’t it glorious?”
“Oh, my, yes,—it’s glorious.” She had herself in hand by another moment and could return his smile. They had never stood near one another before, and the girl noticed he was half-a-head shorter than herself. There were other things the matter with him, seen thus upon the street while other men were passing, and with his hat on! Jeannette could not determine just what they were. Glancing at him furtively as they walked together down the Avenue, she was conscious of a vague disappointment.
“Do you walk downtown every morning?” he asked.
“Oh, sometimes. How did you happen to be up this way so early?”
“I take a stroll through the Park occasionally. It’s wonderful now.”
“Yes, it’s very beautiful.”