Fergus looked me over for a moment, and smiled again, this time winding up with a snort or a cough, which started to be a laugh, but stopped away down somewhere inside of him.
"Ye think I wrote it?"
"Well," said I, "you look perfectly capable of it."
I was just beginning to enjoy thoroughly this give and take of conversation, which of all sports in the world is certainly the most fascinating, when I heard steps behind me and, turning half around, saw Anthy for the first time.
"There's the editor," said Fergus. "Ask her yourself."
She came down the room toward me with a quick, businesslike step. She wore a little round straw hat with a plain band. She had a sprig of lilac on her coat, and looked at me directly—like a man. She had very clear blue eyes.
I have thought of this meeting a thousand times since—in the light of all that followed—and this is literally all I saw. I was not especially impressed in any way, except perhaps with a feeling of wonder that this was the person in authority, really the editor.
I have tried to recall every instant of that meeting, and cannot remember that I thought of her either as young or as a woman. Perhaps the excitement and amusement of my talk with Fergus served to prevent a more vivid first impression. I speak of this reaction because all my life, whenever I have met a woman—I have been much alone—I have had a curious sense of being with some one a little higher or better than I am, to whom I should bow, or to whom I should present something, or with whom I should joke. With whom I should not, after all, be quite natural! I wonder if this is at all an ordinary experience with men? I wonder if any one will understand me when I say that there has always seemed to me something not quite proper in talking to a woman directly, seriously, without reservation, as to a man? But I record it here as a curious fact that I met Anthy that morning just as I would have met a man—as one human being facing another.
"I am the editor," she said crisply, but with good humour.
"Well," I said, "I'm afraid I'm on a rather unusual and unbusinesslike errand."