“Oh, you’ve spoken!” cried the voice at her shoulder.
Miss Wych thought: “Oh, oh, damn!”
Miss Wych said: “This is very extraordinary behaviour. Please go away.”
Miss Wych had intended to say that icily, but in point of fact she said it very shyly. There was a girl who worked with her in the millinery department of Messrs. Come & Go who said: “When I don’t like a boy I just give him the Once-Over and he’s Off.” Miss Wych envied that girl. But she called up her courage and tried to give the stranger the Once-Over. The stranger, however, did not go Off. The stranger was a lean young man with deep dark eyes that seemed to whirl with the trouble that was in him.
“You see,” he said, “it’s like this, Miss Wych. I had to meet you somehow. But how? I did not know what to do. And so I did this. Miss Wych dear, will you forgive me?”
Miss Wych thought: “There are times when one must placate the devil. This must be one of those times.”
Then Miss Wych discovered a most extraordinary thing. She discovered that she was looking deep into the stranger’s dark eyes. She flushed as red as a tennis-court.
“This is terrible,” she said bitterly. “Terrible! How dare you speak to me! Please go away at once.”
“I can’t,” said the young stranger. “I would if I could. But I just can’t. I’m sorry.”