One Man in His Time

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"Everything is going well," she said; and he noticed, for the first time, that her charming smile was tinged with irony, as if the humour of the show, not the drama, were holding her attention. "I am having a beautiful time."

He glanced over her shoulder. "What have you done to Mrs. Rokeby?"

She shook her head, with a laugh which, he surmised sympathetically, was less merry than it sounded. "That is my secret. I have a magic you know—but she looks well, doesn't she? I did her hair myself. If you could have seen the way she had it arranged! That dress is very becoming, I think, it makes her eyes look like frosted violets. Her appearance is a success—but 'More brain, O Lord, more brain'!"

"Do you suppose that type will ever pass?" he asked.

She met his inquiring look with eyes that were golden in the coloured light. "Do you suppose that women will ever mean more to men than pegs on which to hang their sentiments? Alice and her kind will always be convenient substitutes for a man's admiration of himself."

"Which he calls love, you think?"

"Which he probably calls by the most romantic name that occurs to him. Have you seen Patty?"

Before he could reply, she turned away to speak to some one who was approaching on her other side; and a minute later, with a joyous smile at Stephen, she floated off in the dance. Was she really as happy as she looked, or was it only a gallant pretence, nothing more?

He had not found Patty yet; and while he stood there, with his eyes eagerly searching the revolving throng for her face, he had a singular visitation, a poignant sense that some rare and beautiful event was eluding him in its flight, a feeling that the wings of the moment had brushed him like feathers as it sped by into experience. Once or twice in his life before he had received this impression; first in his boyhood when he rose one morning at sunrise to go hunting, and again in France after he had come out of the trenches. Now it was so vivid that it brought with it a sensation of fear, as if happiness itself were escaping his pursuit. He felt that his heart was burning with impatience, and there was a persistent hammering in his ears as if he had been running. What finding her would mean, what the future would bring, he did not know, he did not even seek to discover. All he understood was that the old indifference, the old apathy, the old subjective, tormenting egoism, had given place to a consuming interest, an impassioned delight. He felt only that he was thirsty for life, and that he must drink deep to be satisfied.

Then, suddenly, it seemed to him that the music grew softer and slower, and the wind-blown throng faded from him into a rosy haze. From the centre of the room, borne round and round like a flower on a stream, he saw her face and her romantic eyes looking at him with a deep expectancy that brought a pang to his heart. Her head was thrown back; the short black hair blew about her like mist; and her cheeks and lips were glowing with geranium red. At that instant she was not only the girl he loved—she was youth and spring and adventure.