Jeremy Robson started. Was the urchin possessed of the spirit of divination? Certainly young Mr. Robson had lost his nerve. That much he confessed to himself. The small boy’s dog divined the fact also. He made a charge upon the wavering youth with the evident intention of chasing him up a tree. To be flouted in the open day by a cur of highly impeachable antecedents was a little too much!
“Get out!” commanded Jeremy Robson, in a tone which left no room for doubt.
The small boy and his dog retired hastily. Their intended victim, somewhat reconstituted in soul by the victory, clinched his final decision, not indeed without a sinking of the breath, and with a firm tread and an unwavering eye (as he had once written of an unfortunate going to his execution) again plunged into the imminent, deadly breach of Montgomery Street, and headed for the old house amid the roses. He reckoned that she would be just about on the porch now. If she were n’t, he would go on past and make for the office, and try again on the morrow. If she were—well, he had recovered command of at least three matured and plausible lies to explain his presence. Then he saw her, and the lies forsook and left him stranded with nothing better than the truth to tell, if the issue rose.
She was standing at the top of the five veranda steps.
An errant wind weaving among the roses above her, let through swift glints of sunlight, which played upon her face and hair with fairy touches. There was a dreamy and wistful smile, as in lingering memory of the music she had sung, upon her lips. Her face, broad at the temples and narrowing down to a small, self-willed chin, was modeled nearer upon the sensitive and changeful lines of the triangle than upon the cold and classic oval. Above it the splendid mass of tawny hair was hardly kept respectably within bounds by the prisoning devices of net and band. She was slender, and firm-set, and straight with the soft and strong lines of young, untainted health and vigor. By the warm hues, and the lithe poise of her, she was a creature bred in the happy usages of sunlight and free winds and the open spaces. Again he felt in her that subtle, disturbing, starry quality that makes for dreams.
In her hand she swung a broad sun-hat. Reluctantly she lifted her arms to set it on her head. The pulses of Jeremy Robson made a bound of hopefulness. Evidently she was coming out upon the street. Her eyes were lifted and he wondered that he could ever have thought them gray, so flooded were they with hazel lights as they met the radiance, sifting down through the trees. She turned them upon him and a slow recognition grew in them. Opening the gate, she stood waiting. He lifted his hat as he approached.
“Good-morning,” she greeted him in that voice which, with its indefinable distinction of accent, had thrilled in his memory, since he had first heard her speak.
He returned her greeting, calling her by name.
“It is The Record you write for, is it not?” she asked. “Yes. But they don’t print all I write.”
“So I infer,” she returned with grave and intent eyes. “Were you disappointed?”