It was one of Nick’s old-fashioned ideas—that a man must always be the first to appear at a tryst, must unfailingly be found waiting by the beloved woman when she arrived. He had made a point of being at least fifteen minutes in advance of the appointed time, so that Rosaleen should see him there, in chivalrous if somewhat irritable patience. He was always ready to wait for a woman, to defer to her, to serve her; he believed it to be his duty as a gentleman; and yet so fierce and haughty was his spirit that he was never without an inward resentment.
He was waiting for her now in the corridor of the Fifth Avenue library. It was a wet October afternoon; he sat on a stone bench with his coat collar still turned up, the brim of his hat still turned down, just as he had come in from the street. He hadn’t even taken off his tan gloves, soaked black by the rain; he didn’t care how he looked, and he knew Rosaleen wouldn’t care either. He had certainly not the look of an expectant lover, this lean and shabby young man with his haughty glance, his ready-made overcoat too large for him, his big rubber overshoes over old and shapeless boots. And yet more than one girl stole a glance at him.
Quarter of an hour late! He only wished that he could smoke. He was beginning to feel chilly, too, and terribly depressed. Wet people going past him and past him, some alone, some in couples, treading and talking quietly. He regarded them with morose interest. All of them after books!... Hadn’t he too tried to live that way, vicariously, through books? All very well as a substitute; but there came back to him now, very vividly, the bitter restlessness, the torment that would seize him when he read of some enchanting foreign land, of fierce and desperate adventures. Of course he knew that his life wouldn’t be, and couldn’t be, at all like any other life ever lived in this world; and yet, in spite of his faith in his own destiny, he fretted so, he chafed so at these slow years, these hours so wasted. What was the matter? Why didn’t life begin?
He was pleased enough with this romance with Rosaleen. This was quite as good as anything in books. Only, to be really perfect, love should have been mixed up with peril, with terror, with gallant rescues. It should have been a drama, and it was nothing but an emotion. He was still so young that he could not imagine death; it seemed to him inevitable that he should live and that Rosaleen should live, until they were old—granted, of course, the absurd premise that young people really do become old. He saw no shadow over life, no fear of change or loss.
He stirred uneasily. Twenty minutes late! This was abusing her feminine privilege! Doubly unfortunate, too, because he had come prepared to remonstrate with Rosaleen, and the longer she kept him waiting, the chillier and damper he grew, the more severe would the remonstrance be.
At last he saw her coming, and her sweetness almost disarmed him. And then made him even more severe. A girl like that, to be meeting a man about in public places! A girl so pretty, so charming, that people stared at her.... The damp air and her haste had given her a lovely colour, and as she hurried toward him, he found for her a pitifully time-worn simile which nevertheless struck him as startlingly novel and true—she was like a wild rose.
She had very little “style”; her clothes were rather cheap, he observed. But she was superlatively ladylike, refined, modest. He wouldn’t have had anything changed, from her sturdy little boots to her plain dark hat.
He rose and came toward her, hat in hand, and for a moment they looked at each other, speechlessly.
“Suppose we have tea?” he said, at last. “There’s a nice place near here where they have very good waffles.”