“I’ll find her!” he thought. “I know her name, and I’ll find her. I won’t lose her!”
He glanced around the waiting room again, and again he met the eyes of the pretty girl who had smiled at him before. No denying that she was pretty, but he was sternly uninterested. Let her smile!
This time, though, she rose from her seat, and made a step in his direction.
“She’ll ask me some question about a train,” thought Kirby.
He was a good-looking young fellow, and this sort of thing had happened to him before. At another time he might perhaps have been a little less severe. She was very pretty—a tall, slender girl in a very short frock, with a red hat pulled down over one eye. Her piquant little face was rouged and powdered. Kirby might have seen a sort of debonair charm about her, if he had not had in his heart the image of another face, so honest, so unspoiled, so very different!
He walked the length of the room, and when he came back he passed quite close to her. She smiled again—a tremulous, miserable, forlorn little smile. He stopped and stared at her.
“Look here!” he said. “You’re not—are you—Miss Richards?”
“Yes, I am,” she replied in a defiant and unsteady voice.
He could not speak for a moment, so bitter was his disappointment. She was not rare and wonderful; she was only a pretty, silly, painted little thing, like thousands of others.
“If only she hadn’t come!” he thought. “If only I’d never seen her again! Then I could have gone on—”