I think I had turned pale; I felt myself now grow crimson.
“Oh!” I blurted out, saying, of course, in my confusion exactly what I would not have said: “only a—a little girl with such wonderful hair.”
“Where?” asked Isabel, again poking her head out—in the wrong direction, of course; she was tired of the long waiting, and jumped at the smallest excitement. “Oh, yes! I see! at the door of the refreshment, room. Yes, it is magnificent hair; but, Vic, you said—”
“Nonsense!” I interrupted, “she’s nowhere near the refreshment room; it’s not possible it’s the same.”
Nor was it. Bronzie was by this time out of sight, far off among the throng of travellers at the left extremity of the platform, and the refreshment room was some yards to our right. It was absolutely, practically impossible. “Nonsense!” I repeated peevishly, looking out, nevertheless, in expectation of seeing some childish head of ordinary fair hair at the spot my sister indicated. But I started violently—yes, it was Bronzie again; the self-same hair, at least. And the girl was standing, with her back to us, at the door of the first-class refreshment room, as Isabel had said. I felt as if I were dreaming; my brain was in a whirl. I sat down in my place for a moment to recover myself.
“I wonder,” said my sister, “if her face is as lovely as her hair? She is sure to turn round directly. Wait a minute, Vic, I’ll tell you if she oh, how tiresome! I do believe we are off; after waiting so long, they might as well have waited one moment longer.”
And off we were—in the opposite direction too. We could see no more of her—Bronzie, or not Bronzie! On the whole I was not sorry that my sister’s curiosity was doomed to be unsatisfied. But my own perplexity was great. How could the child have been spirited all the length of the station in that instant of time?
“She is a fairy; that is the only explanation,” I said to myself, laughingly. “Perhaps I have dreamt her only—in church, that Christmas too—but no; Isabel saw the hair as well as I.”
Time went on, faster and faster. I was a man—very thoroughly a man—for seven years had passed since that winter day’s journey. I was five-and-twenty; I had completed my studies, travelled for a couple of years, and was about settling down to my own home and its responsibilities—for my father was dead, and I was an eldest son—when the curtain rises for the third and last time in this simplest of dramas. I was unmarried, yet no misogamist, nor was there the shadowiest of reasons why I should not marry; rather, considerably even, the other way. My family wished it; I wished it myself in the abstract. I had money enough and to spare. I loved my home, and was ready to love it still more; but I had never cared for any woman as I knew I must care for the woman I could make happy, and be happy with, as my wife. It was strange—strange and disappointing. I had never fallen in love, though I may really say I had wished to do so. Never, that is to say since I was fifteen, and the gleaming locks of my Bronzie—like Aslauga’s golden tresses—had irradiated for me the corner of the gloomy old London church where she sat.
That was ten years ago now, yet I had not forgotten my one bit of romance.