With the first notes of the orchestra a young man hurried down the aisle and dropped into a seat far back in the shadow of the balcony. His eyes swept hastily over the audience and then became fixed on a box near the stage.
“I knew she would be here,” he murmured softly; “she could never keep away from this music.”
It was a pretty picture he found to gaze upon and it was little wonder that he looked but seldom at the stage. More attractive even than the rows of gorgeously dressed girls in the chorus was that box near the stage. Seated toward the front was a young girl, just rounding into the beauty of the woman—while retaining all the freshness of girlhood. Behind her laughed and chatted a few companions of her own age, but she kept her eyes fixed upon the stage and seemed to fairly revel in the beauty of the ringing chorus. To her the music seemed everything, and the great bunch of violets in her hand was beating unconscious time to the march.
Far back in the shadow the boy, for he was little more, leaned forward and watched the rapidly changing expression on her face. He followed the action of the play only through the varying moods which found a reflection in her eyes. Many times had he watched her thus, haunting the theaters only to sit unobserved and gaze longingly at her every moment that he could, then slipping quietly away before the curtain dropped to avoid meeting her in the throng. Never once, in all the long months, had their eyes met, and if she had been conscious of his presence she had given no sign.
“It has been a long time,” he muttered, moving restlessly in his seat. “What a fool a man can be when there is a woman in the case.”
He had met her only the summer before, a summer filled with little excursions to nearby resorts where city folk threw off the burden of formality in the jolly little dances and moonlight strolls. How it all came back to him now—the open pavilion with the negro musicians, the rapturous waltzes and the swinging two-steps and the long talk on the broad veranda afterward, talk of nothing of great importance but which now seemed to him to be worth years away from her.
Then had followed the autumn and the return to the city. The long evenings at her home, where the soft glow of the candles behind a crimson shade had lent a new beauty to her clearly moulded features. She had loved the soft light of the candles as she had loved the moonlight. It had seemed that everything about her had breathed of softness and quiet. Changing moods she had shown—he had often called her his “Maid of infinite variety,” but each new mood had given her a new attraction in his eyes; every new phase of her character had brought her closer to him.
It all passed in rapid review before him. Now he sat in the old lawn swing beside her, now he turned her music as she sang the old songs they both loved. He remembered the good-byes at the gate and the long walk to the city afterward. There had never been cigars with so sweet a flavor as those which kept him company on the long way home. Just the moonlight and the blue smoke and thoughts of her.
But it had ended at last. Only a misunderstanding which caused a growing coldness and then a sudden interruption of his dream. He had been too proud to ask but once for an explanation—she was as proud as he. It had been months since the two had met—months when the city seemed to be as lonely as only a great city can.
“It’s hard,” he muttered, and though his lips kept their stern, almost defiant expression, his eyes had a half appealing look as they rested upon the girl in the box.