When he had tired of all three, Broadway, Hill and Main, he told her, he had turned to Spring street and found her ever alluring and interesting. It was there, in George Blake's gymnasium, that he had trained for the bout at Vernon and it was there that "Gink" Cummings had held sway, manipulating Gibson like a puppet, ruling with an iron hand, ordering his gangsters to "bash" whoever opposed him and collecting his ill-gotten tributes.
"Do you remember," she asked, "that day we met and how when you said you were frightened and embarrassed I told you that I had read stories of reporters who never knew fear and that in plays and books the reporter always did the bravest things?"
He smiled back to her.
"And I told you that it was like a story or a play when you rescued me from the servant who had asked me to leave?" he added. "I told you then that you were a beautiful heroine and pointed out Gibson to you as the villain."
"And you said that in books and plays dreams came true and when I asked you what dream you wished to come true you said, 'A rather silly, hopeless, golden sort of dream—a dream of meeting you again,'" she supplemented.
"A dream that came true far more wonderfully than I ever hoped it would," he said.
They were beside her open casement window. It was a warm, bright Sunday morning and in a few minutes they would leave to meet his mother for the long-deferred visit to the home of Consuello's parents.
"There have been stories of all kinds, told and untold, about Spring street," he said, "but do you know the one I like best?"
She shook her head.
"The story you told to me of how it received its name," he said. "And do you know why?"