It was late afternoon and just as she was returning from her task of seeking work in connection with the stage that they met. There he was in Althea’s room, tall, spare, angular, slightly sallow and cloisterish, his heavy eyebrows low above his sunken eyes as though he sought to shut himself in to himself, and with those large dark eyes fixed ruminatively and yet somewhat uncertainly upon all, even her when she came. And from Althea she gathered that he was a painter of strange dark landscapes and decorations which many of those who knew seemed to think were wonderful but which as yet had achieved no recognition at all. Worse, he was from the Rockies, a sheep-rancher’s son, but had not been able to endure ranching. His future was still very far before him, and, as one could sense, he was so innocent of any desire to be put forward; he seemed half the time to be a—dream. By some strange freak of luck he was still there when she entered, sitting in a corner not entirely at ease, because, as he told her later, he was strange to such affairs and did not know when to go.
The brightness of the buildings in the spring sun!
And she had looked at his hands, at his commonplace clothes, and then, a little troubled by his gaze, had withdrawn hers. Again and again her eyes sought his or his hers, as though they were furtively surveying each other; as though each was unable to keep his eyes off the other. And by degrees there was set up in her a tremendous something that was like music and fear combined, as though all at once she had awakened and comprehended. She was no longer the complete master of herself, as she had always imagined, but was now seized upon and possessed by this stranger! In brief, here he was, her dream, and now she could do nothing save gaze nervously and appealingly—for what? Those dark, sombre eyes, the coarse black hair and sallow skin! Yes, it was he indeed, her love, her star, the one by whose mystic light she had been steering her course these many years. She sensed it. Knew it. He was here before her now as though saying: “Come.” And she could only smile foolishly without speaking. Her hands trembled and her throat tightened until she almost choked. “I never saw any one more beautiful than you,” he had said afterwards when they talked, and she had thrilled so that it was an effort not to cry out. And then he had sighed like a child and said: “Talk to me, about anything—but don’t go, will you?”
The air—the air—this day!
And so, realizing that he valued her for this one gift at least, her beauty, she had sought now to make him understand that she was his without, however, throwing herself beggingly before him. With her eyes, her smile, her every gesture, she had said: “I am yours! I am yours! Can’t you see?” At last, in his shy way, he had seemed to comprehend, but even then, as he afterwards confessed, he could not believe that anything so wonderful could follow so speedily upon contact, that one could love, adore, at sight. She had asked where he lived and if she might come and see his work, and with repressed intensity he had said: “I wish you would! I wish you could come to-day!” It had made her sad and yet laugh, too, for joy.
That single tree blooming in this long, hard block!
There and then, with only the necessary little interludes which propriety seemed to demand, and with longing and seeking on the part of each, had begun that wondrous thing, their love. Only it seemed to have had no fixed beginning,—to have been always—just been. For the day she had called him up his voice had so thrilled her that she could scarcely speak. She had still felt she had known him for so long. How could that have been?
“I was afraid you might not call,” he had said tremulously, and she had replied: “And I was wondering if you really wanted me to.”
And when she sought him out in his studio she had found it to be such a poor mean room over a stable, in a mean street among a maze of mean streets, and yet had thought it heaven. It was so like him, so bare and yet wonderful—a lovely spiritual mood set over against tawdry materials and surroundings.
“Drive me through the East Side, Fred.”