When I got there Roland was already eating his supper. No sign of Irma yet. The American is one of those older lunchrooms where they have long mahogany tables each decorated with a row of sugar bowls and sauce bottles with squirt tops. In such places one of the squirt tops still gives "pepper sauce" though I never saw anybody use it. There was a double row of long tables with a lane between. Roland had the wall seat of the first table on the right. His shorthand book was propped against a vinegar bottle, and he studied it while he fed himself.
I took a seat two removes from him on the same side of the table. He paid no attention to me. I took this distance, because if Irma came I didn't want to hear too much. No one was likely to sit between us, so long as there were whole tables vacant. It was a little early for the supper hour, and there were few in the place.
I ordered the pièce de resistance of such places, viz.: a plate of beef stew. Roland was almost through his supper, and I wondered apprehensively if Irma meant to exercise her woman's prerogative of being late. Perhaps her nerve had failed her, and she would not come. She had burned her bridges though. What else could she do but come? From time to time I glanced in my young friend's face. It was pale and drawn. Verily, I thought, his infernal pride was sapping his youth.
Then I saw Irma and my heart set up a great beating. It's a risky thing to presume to play Providence to a pair of young souls, one of whom is as explosive as guncotton. What was going to happen? Irma was hovering about outside. She glanced in the place nervously. Unfortunately there was no other woman eating there at the moment, though women did come to the place. Irma walked on. Had she given up? My heart sunk. No, presently she came strolling back. She meant to wait for him outside. I approved her good sense. Plainly dressed though she was, her entrance into that place would have created a sensation.
Roland, all unconscious of what was in store, got up, slipped the book in his pocket, paid his score with an abstracted air, and went out. He never looked at me. His brain was full of shorthand symbols.
I followed him at once, though I had but started my supper. Nobody cared so long as I paid.
I was just in time to see them come face to face on the pavement outside.
"Roland!" she whispered with the loveliest smile surely that ever bedecked the human countenance; wistful, supplicating and tender.
He started back as if he had been shot, and gazed at her with a kind of horror. He did not speak. I expect he could not. Passers-by stared at them curiously. Irma lowered her head, and slipping her hand inside his arm with affecting confidence, drew him forward away from the stares. Still he did not speak. He was oblivious to the passers-by, and to everything else but her. He gazed at her like a man in a trance, his dark eyes full of a passionate hunger. She only spoke once more. Raising her eyes to his she moved her lips. I could read them.
"I love you," she whispered.