They encountered one another under the electric lights in the wooden labyrinth which forms the ferry terminal of the Sixth Avenue Elevated Railroad, she hastening one way, he hurrying the opposite. There was ample room for them to pass each other; it may have been because she was unusually pretty, it may have been his absent-mindedness, but he made one of those mistakes which everybody makes once in a lifetime: he turned to the left, realised what he was doing, wheeled hastily to the right—as she, too, turned—only to meet her face to face, politely dodge, meet again, lose his head and begin a heart-breaking contra-dance, until, vexed and bewildered, she stood perfectly still, and he, redder than she, took the opportunity to slink past her and escape.
"Hey!" said a sarcastic voice, as, blinded with chagrin, he found himself attempting to force a locked wooden gate. "You want to go the other way, unless you're hunting for the third rail."
"No, I don't," he said, wrathfully; "I want to go uptown."
"That's what I said; you want to go the other way, even if you don't know where you want to go," yawned the gateman disdainfully.
Seabury collected his scattered wits and gazed about him. Being a New Yorker, and acquainted with the terminal labyrinth, he very quickly discovered his error, and, gripping suit-case and golf-bag more firmly, he turned and retraced his steps at the natural speed of a good New Yorker, which is a sort of a meaningless lope.
Jammed into the familiar ticket line, he peered ahead through the yellow glare of light and saw the charming girl with whom he had danced his foolish contra-dance just receiving her ticket from the boxed automaton. Also, to his satisfaction, he observed her disappear through the turnstile into the crush surging forward alongside of the cars, and, when he presently deposited his own ticket in the chopper's box, he had no more expectation of ever again seeing her than he had of doing something again to annoy and embarrass her.
But even in Manhattan Destiny works overtime, and Fate gets busy in a manner that no man knoweth; and so, personally though invisibly conducted, Seabury lugged his suit-case and golf-bag aboard a train, threaded his way into a stuffy car and took the only empty seat remaining; and a few seconds later, glancing casually at his right-hand neighbour, he blushed to find himself squeezed into a seat beside his unusually attractive partner in the recent contra-dance.
That she had already seen him, the calm indifference in her blue eyes, the poise of her flushed face, were evidence conclusive.