Had she come to care herself?
She asked the question with a beating heart. Was this love,—the feeling about which she had speculated so long? Love,—the great love? Was she to meet her fate so soon? Was her adventure among men to be so soon over? Was this all there was to it? The first man she met? She and Roy Beardsley?
She denied it vehemently. No, it was nonsense,—it was ridiculous! Roy Beardsley was a boy,—a mere youth who had been dropped from college. She would not permit herself to become interested in him. It was preposterous,—absurd!
She assured herself she would have no difficulty in controlling her emotion in future, but the emotion itself continued to puzzle her. What was it, she felt for this man? Was she in love,—really in love,—in love at last? She looked at him a long time. She wondered.
§ 2
That he would meet her on the Avenue next morning she felt was almost certain. She said to herself a hundred times it would be much wiser for her to take the elevated train, or at least to walk down another street and avoid the possibility of such an encounter. If she were not to permit herself to become further interested, it was obvious she must see him as little as possible. But when morning came it was into Fifth Avenue she turned.... She felt so sure of herself; she wanted to see if he would really be there.
Once or twice she thought she recognized his distant figure coming toward her. Each time her heart came into her throat. She stopped and made a pretense of studying a milliner’s window, while she wrestled with herself. She was mad, she was a fool, she had no business to let herself play with fire this way! At the next corner she would turn eastward, and go down Fourth Avenue. But when she reached the cross street she decided to walk just one more block, and in that interval he stepped from a doorway where he had been watching for her, and joined her.
“Good-morning.”
“Oh—hello!”
The sudden sight of him, the sound of his voice affected her like fright. She hurried on, trying to still the pounding in her breast, turning her face toward the traffic in the street to hide her confusion.