The road was a level, hard one, but all at once Polly felt a queer pain that took her breath completely away and then a sudden darkness.
She did not fall, however, because some one who was walking in the direction of her hotel reached her just in time.
Then to her amazement Polly heard an exclamation that had in some unexplainable way a familiar note in it. The next moment when straightening up and opening her eyes she seemed to be reposing in the arms of a tall man with dark eyes and gray hair, whom she had once known extremely well, but had not seen in the past five years.
CHAPTER XI
A Meeting and an Explanation
"I—I was running," explained Miss O'Neill as soon as she had sufficient breath to speak.
Which was such an absurdly unnecessary statement of an apparent fact that her rescuer smiled against his will.
He was not pleased at this meeting with Miss Polly O'Neill. It was true that he had been walking out to her hotel to make inquiries concerning her health, but he had no thought or desire to see her. Indeed, deep down in his heart he believed that few women had ever treated a man much worse than she had treated him and he had never even tried to forgive her. For several years they had been engaged to be married, only postponing the wedding because of Polly's youth and because she wanted to go on with her acting for a few years longer without interruption. Then when Richard Hunt had insisted that he was not young and could not wait forever, with characteristic coolness Polly had broken her engagement. She had written him of her change of mind and heart and he had accepted her letter as final. Never once since had they met face to face until this minute.