He was so little sure of his capacity to execute his own purpose that, through mere distrust of doing what he wanted to do, he was almost ready to give the project up and declare himself beaten before the battle. And all the while he walked onward he began to accumulate doubts respecting the undertaking of such a delicate operation beneath the searching light of day. He had one revelation of the girl's great eyes fixed solemnly upon his lips, and watching him as he wallowed in his embarrassment, and his soul flinched. For a moment he had desperate thoughts of return. Then he sat, under the white flag of truce, on a rail. Then he moved slowly onward again, with fixed eyes on Ullbrig, praying he might miss the girl. And with this prayer almost moving his lips, at Hesketh's corner he met her.
CHAPTER XVI
She wore a great hat of coarse Zulu straw, trimmed with white muslin and scarlet poppies, and a pale cream muslin dress, beneath whose hem her neat shoes and trim, black ankles showed themselves so demurely, like sleek twin witches of seductive enchantment. In her left hand she carried a snowy-topped basket emblematic of Faith, Hope and Charity—particularly this last—while the thumb of her cotton-gloved right hand was tucked, at the time of their recognition, into a green crocodile leather belt. She was just passing the corner, indeed, as she caught sight of the Spawer, and had to fall back on her heel to verify the impression; then she stood waiting for him, swinging the basket in front of her skirt with both hands, and showing the glad smile for a welcome and unexpected meeting. All the gloomy necessities of the encounter were packed up and stowed away at the back of the Spawer's being with the first slight shock of realisation. Almost spontaneously he discarded his reflections as though they had been impersonal and bearing no reference to the girl before him, and advanced upon her with the sunny face that seemed never to have known the clouds of disquietude.
"How funny," said Pam simply, as he came near. "... I was just thinking about you."
"I can see you were," he laughed.
"Can you?" asked Pam, smiling, but a shade incredulous.
"By your ears," he told her.
Pam put her fingers to them.
"It is the sun," she said, nipping a little crimson lobe between cool white-cottoned fingers. "Yours burn too. Were you thinking about me?"
"Perhaps."