A more unlikely place hardly could have been chosen for their meeting than an "isle of safety" in mid-street, with motors hissing and toof-toofing round about, policemen gesticulating, and the crowd ceaselessly surging. The two were marooned with twenty others, and met face to face, squarely, like foes who set themselves to combat. At first he tried not to see her, and she, noting his impulse, thought it would be the part of propriety not to see him. Then that struck her as so futile, so childish, so altogether a libel on the good-fellowship which they had enjoyed in the old days, that she held out her hand.
He swept his hat from his head and grasped the extended hand in a violent yet tremulous clutch.
"We seem to be going in opposite directions," she said. There was just a hint of a rising inflection in the accent.
He laughed with nervous delight.
"We are going the same way," he declared. "That's a well-established fact."
An irritable policeman broke in on them with:--
"Do you people want to get across the street or not?"
"Personally," said McCrea, smiling at him, "I'm not particular."
The policeman was Irish and he liked lovers. He thought he was looking at a pair of them.
"Well, it's not the place I'd be choosing for conversation, sir," he said.