Then once more raising his hat with a smile that enthralled her, he had vanished down the stairs, and a moment later she had seen him going down a side street—a lean young figure with a long stride.
. . . . . . . . . .
“I shan’t go!” she sobbed. “Of course not! What would be the sense? I’d just better forget all about him.”
“It wouldn’t be fair!” she went on. “Because—if he knew ... he wouldn’t want to see me....”
Useless to recollect newspaper tales of dukes and chorus girls, of millionaires and waitresses, of Cophetua and the beggar maid in all its modern guises. All those people were different. There was no other man like him, no other woman like her. What is more, Rosaleen had no faith in romance. Had not her history been what anyone would call romantic, and wasn’t it as cruel and dull and cold as any life could be?
She sat up and dried her eyes.
“No!” she said. “No use thinking about it.... No use making a fool of myself.”
It had grown quite dark. She got up and lighted the flaring gas jet on a wall bracket, and looked at the big impudent face of the alarm clock standing on her austere bureau top. And at the same time caught sight of her own face, stained and swollen with tears, but still lovely in its pure young outline, with the wise innocence of those drowned grey eyes. The type one calls “flower-like,” with the exquisite fineness of her old, old race, the deep set eyes, the passionate and sensitive mouth, the strange look of resignation. She was rather fair, with light brown hair and a sweet and healthy colour; she was slender and not very tall; she looked fragile, but she was not. She had a strength, an energy, an endurance beyond measure.
An endurance well known and profited by in this household. She brushed her fine hair and pinned it up tightly and carelessly; she bathed her eyes in cold water and tied an apron about her waist. And went along the corridor of the dark, old-fashioned flat to the kitchen. All neat as a pin there. Potatoes closely pared, soaking in cold water, lettuce in a wet cloth, a jar of lard set to cool on the window sill, ready for the inevitable frying. She set to work briskly to prepare the supper, and when it was cooking on the stove, she set up the ironing board and began to press a pile of napkins and handkerchiefs. And began to sing to herself in a low and mournful voice.
At six o’clock came the expected sound of a key in the latch, and presently a venerable grey-bearded old gentleman put his head into the kitchen.