The next time he was not too soon. He found her in the shop, and she had a note for him. From Rosalind, or Tattie? Rosalind! he knew the writing. Let the girls gape! he wasn't going outside to read it among the vegetables. He opened it with elaborate listlessness. She had not protracted his pain while she framed graceful messages. Her response consisted of eight words; but they sufficed:
"Wait at the laundry. Throwing on my hat."
He doubled the girl's sovereign, and drove no bargain with her mistress. But the laundry cooped him now. He closed the door, and loitered gratefully on the step. Yes, indeed, he would wait; in the sweetness of relief he was scarcely impatient. A little drizzle was in the air, but he did not heed it. The day, and the morrow, and a hundred days broke into smiles before him. And while he lingered there—on the laundress's step, in the squalid street, under the rain—Conrad suddenly awoke to the exhilaration that sparkled in him, was startled by its freshness. He realised that fizzing in his pulses and his mind was the zest, the buoyancy that he had mourned as dead. It was here, alive! He reviewed with gusto his emotions of the afternoon, the hope, the suspense, the desperation—the quiver of rejoicing. It had been good! he had lived and felt this afternoon; he would not have abated those emotions by a jot! The immoral truth was clear to him, he had made his great discovery—that a man is young as often as he falls in love. That Rosalind had beauty, was an irrelevance. Again, to her lover a woman is what she makes him feel. Whether she is fair or ill-favoured, whether she is worthy or worthless, whether she is formed like Venus, or clasps him in arms as thin as penholders, to him she is supreme, and while he adores her he is Young.
The rain was pattering more smartly, and he waited under his umbrella. Exultation was in his heart, her promise was in his pocket, ten years of his age had been shed behind the door. And at this point it may be discreet of us to take leave of Conrad—as Rosalind's cab comes jingling round the corner.
THE END
********
BY LEONARD MERRICK
THE POSITION OF PEGGY
CONRAD IN QUEST OF HIS YOUTH
THE MAN WHO UNDERSTOOD WOMEN: STORIES
WHISPERS ABOUT WOMEN: STORIES
LYNCH'S DAUGHTER
THE MAN WHO WAS GOOD
THIS STAGE OF FOOLS
CYNTHIA
ONE MAN'S VIEW
THE ACTOR MANAGER
THE WORLDLINGS
WHEN LOVE FLIES OUT O' THE WINDOW
THE QUAINT COMPANIONS
Several of Mr. Merrick's books are at
present unpublished in America. Mitchell
Kennerley will publish new volumes from
time to time.