"Well, Mr. Neal!" he exclaimed. "I swear you're getting younger every day!"
Mr. Neal laughed happily as he changed his own coat and climbed upon his familiar stool. His desk neighbor turned and regarded him good-naturedly.
"He'll be running off and getting married pretty soon," prophesied the neighbor, for the benefit of the whole office force.
Mr. Neal laughed again.
"You're judging me by your own case, Bob," he rejoined. Then in a lower tone, "That romance of yours now—how is it coming?"
That was enough to cause the young man to pour into Mr. Neal's willing ear all the latest developments of Bob's acquaintance with the only girl in the world.
For a long time Mr. Neal lived in daily hope of seeing the face again. He got into the habit of changing to a local at Fourteenth Street because it was at that station he had seen the face before, but he caught not a glimpse of any face resembling the one that he could see at any time he closed his eyes. Yet he was not discouraged. He was happy, because he felt that something big and noble had come into his life—that now he had something to live for. It was only a question of time, he told himself, until he should find the face. It was but a question of time—and he could wait.
So the weeks and months passed by. Mr. Neal never relaxed his search for the face; it had become a part of his life. There was no monotony in his great game. He always found new faces interesting to classify, some unusual combination, some degree of emotional development he had not seen before. But the face never.
Until one Saturday half holiday in December. This is the way it happened.
Mr. Neal employed this particular half holiday at Columbus Park. Long ago he had found this park, adjoining Chatham Square and near Chinatown, Mulberry Bend and the Bowery, a great gathering place for the lower types of humanity, and such half holidays as he did not spend at the library studying Lombroso, Darwin, Piderit, Lavater, and other physiognomists, he usually employed at Columbus Park. Sometimes he wandered over to Hester Street, or up Orchard or some other Ghetto street off Delancey, or sometimes he spent a few hours in Battery Park or in the tenement district of the lower West Side. On this particular Saturday he found Columbus Park less populous than it had been on his last visit a month before, for many of its habitues had sought warmer climes. The weather was seasonably cold, and Mr. Neal felt really sorry for some of the old, broken-down men and women he saw.