George had nothing more to say. It was sacrilege, but there seemed no way of preventing it.
2
As Hamilton Beamish, some quarter of an hour later, climbed in a series of efficient movements up the stairs of the green omnibus which was waiting in Washington Square, the summer afternoon had reached its best and sweetest. A red-blooded, one hundred per cent American sun still shone warmly down from a sky of gleaming azure, but there had stolen into the air a hint of the cool of evening. It was the sort of day when Tin Pan Alley lyric-writers suddenly realise that "love" rhymes with "skies above," and rush off, snorting, to turn out the song-hit of a lifetime. Sentimentality was abroad: and gradually, without his being aware of it, its seeds began to plant themselves in the stony and uncompromising soil of Hamilton Beamish's bosom.
Yes, little by little, as the omnibus rolled on up the Avenue, there began to burgeon in Hamilton Beamish a mood of gentle tolerance for his species. He no longer blamed so whole-heartedly the disposition of his fellow-men to entertain towards the opposite sex on short acquaintance a warmth of emotion which could be scientifically justified only by a long and intimate knowledge of character. For the first time he began to debate within himself whether there was not something to be said for a man who was, like George Finch, plunged headlong into love with a girl to whom he had never even spoken.
And it was at this precise moment—just, dramatically enough, when the bus was passing Twenty-Ninth Street with its pretty and suggestive glimpse of the Little Church Round the Corner—that he noticed for the first time the girl in the seat across the way.
She was a girl of chic and élan. One may go still further—a girl of espièglerie and je ne sais quoi. She was dressed, as Hamilton Beamish's experienced eye noted in one swift glance, in a delightful two-piece suit composed of a smart coat in fine quality repp, lined throughout with crêpe-de-chine, over a dainty long-sleeved frock of figured Marocain prettily pleated at the sides and finished at the neck with a small collar and kilted frill: a dress which, as every schoolboy knows, can be had in beige, grey, mid-grey, opal, snuff, powder, burnt wood, puce, brown, bottle, almond, navy, black and dark Saxe. Her colour was dark Saxe.
Another glance enabled Hamilton Beamish to take in her hat. It was, he perceived, a becoming hat in Yedda Visca straw, trimmed and bound with silk petersham ribbon, individual without being conspicuous, artistic in line and exquisite in style: and from beneath it there strayed a single curl of about the colour of a good Pekingese dog. Judging the rest of her hair by the light of this curl, Hamilton Beamish deduced that, when combing and dressing it, she just moistened the brush with a little scalpoline, thus producing a gleamy mass, sparkling with life and possessing that incomparable softness, freshness and luxuriance, at the same time toning each single hair to grow thick, long and strong. No doubt she had read advertisements of the tonic in the papers and now, having bought a bottle, was seeing how healthy and youthful her hair appeared after this delightful, refreshing dressing.
Her shoes were of black patent-leather, her stockings of steel-grey. She had that schoolgirl complexion and the skin you love to touch.
All these things the trained eye of Hamilton Beamish noted, swivelling rapidly sideways and swivelling rapidly back again. But it was her face that he noted most particularly. It was just the sort of face which, if he had not had his policy of Sane Love all carefully mapped out, would have exercised the most disturbing effect on his emotions. Even as it was, this strong, competent man could not check, as he alighted from the bus at Seventy-Ninth Street, a twinge of that wistful melancholy which men feel when they are letting a good thing get away from them.
Sad, reflected Hamilton Beamish, as he stood upon the steps of Number 16 and prepared to ring the bell, that he would never see this girl again. Naturally, a man of his stamp was not in love at first sight, but nevertheless he did not conceal it from himself that nothing would suit him better than to make her acquaintance and, after careful study of her character and disposition, possibly discover in a year or two that it was she whom Nature had intended for his mate.