At least, he would fare forth for a while on the broad asphalt trail that begins under the arch of the little park and runs to the entrance of the great park. Even as the desert has its spell of overawing stillness in an uninhabited land, so this trail had its spell of congested human movement in the heart of habitations. A broad, luminous blade lay across the west side of the street and left the other in shade; and all the world that loved sunshine and had no errands on the east side kept to the west side. There was a communism of inspiration abroad. It was a conqueror's triumph just to be alive and feel the pulse-beat of the throng. The very over-developed sensitiveness of city nerves became something to be thankful for in providing the capacity for keener enjoyment as compensation for the capacity for keener pain.
Womankind was in spring plumage. The mere consciousness of the value of light to their costumes, no less than the elixir in their nostrils, gave vivacity to their features. As usual, Jack was seeing them only to see Mary. The creation of no couturier could bear rivalry with the garb in which his imagination clothed her. He found himself suddenly engrossed in a particular exhibit of fashion's parade a little distance ahead and going in the same direction as himself, a young woman in a simplicity of gown to which her carriage gave the final touch of art. Her steps had a long-limbed freedom and lightness, with which his own steps ran in a rhythm to the music of some past association. The thrall of a likeness, which more and more possessed him, made him hasten to draw near for a more satisfying glimpse.
The young woman turned her head to glance into a shop-window and then there could be no mistaking that cheek and chin and the peculiar relation of the long lashes to the brow. It was the profile whose imprint had become indelible on his mind when he had come round an elbow of rock on Galeria. The Jack of wild, tumultuous pleading who had parted from Mary Ewold on the pass became a Jack elate with the glad, swimming joy of May sunshine at seeing and speaking to her again.
"Mary! Mary!" he cried. "My, but you've become a grand swell!" he breathed delectably, with a fuller vision of her.
"Jack!"
There was a nervous twitching of her lips. He saw her eyes at first in a blaze of surprise and wonder; then change to the baffling sparkle, hiding their depths, of the slivers of glass on the old barrier. His smile and hers in unspoken understanding said that two comrades of another trail had met on the Avenue trail. There had not been any Leddy; there had not been any scene on the pass. They were back to the conditions of the protocol he had established when they started out from the porch of the Ewold bungalow in the airiest possible mood to look at a parcel of land.
"And you also have become a grand swell!" she said. "Did you expect that I should be in a gray riding-habit? Certainly I didn't expect to see you in chaps and spurs."
It was brittle business; but with a common resource in play they managed it well. And there they were walking together, noted by passers-by for their youth and beaming oblivion to everything but themselves.
"How long have you been here?" Jack asked.
"Two weeks," she answered.