There is a peculiar honesty about true affection for woman. It is for the flirtations, the light and frivolous intimacies that a man smooths his hair, picks out his scarf, and purchases a new stick. Somehow it seems to me that a gentleman of natural high honor will always present his average self to the one woman. That he should be attentive is natural, that he should be affected is repellent to my notions. Perhaps it was for this reason that without preparation I closed my desk and walked up to meet Julianna, as I would have walked home to my own bachelor quarters.
She was waiting for me!
“I have been expecting you,” said she, with her hand upon the dog’s grizzled head, and in that frank and simple statement there was more charm than in all the false feminine reserve in the universe.
“I did not come before,” I told her, “because I felt that you might believe me presuming too much.”
“Why?” said she in the manner of a child.
I could not answer. I merely gazed at her. She was half leaning, half sitting on the retaining wall of the park, and her skin, which was flecked with the shadows of new maple leaves above her, was lighted not only by the yellow rays of the afternoon sun, but also with the bright colors which her brisk walk had brought to the soft surface. I assure you, she made a pretty picture.
“I would have been glad to see you yesterday,” she said slowly, marking with the toe of one shoe upon the gravel. “You have been one of my father’s younger friends a long time.”
“There is nothing the matter!” I cried.
“I can’t tell,” she said. “He is old, you know, and I can explain it in no other way.”
“He is not ill?”