The entries of the next few days dealt chiefly with his evening parades and with the struggles of his conscience as to whether he ought to write her again. By pressure of the longing in his soul he became bolder; one evening he even had the courage to go into the front hall of the apartment-house and search out her name in the long row of letter-boxes above the electric-bell buttons. The simple “Wright” printed there held him spellbound for so long that, when he recollected himself, he fled fearfully from the building, and trembled afterward at the thought of the risk he had run. But his timidity did not prevent him from continuing to haunt the vicinity of her home.
Such was his absorption in his romance, such interesting business filled his evenings, that he was never lonely, as he had often been even in the company of the other boarders at Mrs. Benson’s. Except for an occasional visit to his brother and sister-in-law in Brooklyn, he had no more human associations, and desired none. The place where he lived was a rooming-house; he took his solitary meals in restaurants, seeking out the cheapest places, so that he might save every possible cent toward discharging the financial burden his engagement and dereliction had put upon him.
But taking it all in all, he was happier than he had ever been in his life before. Never had one of his ideal romances developed so far; and never, thanks principally to the affectionate, if brief advances, of Mrs. Benson, had he had so true an idea of the meaning of love. He composed many notes to Miss Anna Wright,—I hope he will forgive me for setting forth her name in cold type,—and he knew that the time was approaching when he would send one to her.
On Friday, May 13, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:
“Five o’clock in the morning. I have met her face to face, I have spoken to her, and walked with her! We ran into each other, almost. I was gawking up at her window,—I mean the one I call hers,—and I did not see her until she stopped and spoke to me.
“What a fool I must have seemed! I could not say anything—not a word. She asked me if I lived in the neighborhood, and I said no. She said she was just going out for a walk over to Central Park and back to get the air. I said it was a pleasant evening for a walk, fool that I am! She said several other things; asked me about the store. Then she said good evening, and went on. I went on, too, in the direction I was going when I met her.
“But there are times when a man forgets everything but one thing. I turned back before I had gone half a block. I followed her. I cannot describe how I felt. All the way up Fifth Avenue from Thirty-eighth Street I kept her in sight. I do not know how I had the courage to go up and speak to her while she was passing St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Something outside myself forced me to do it. I was not myself. She let me walk with her. She let me walk back to her door again with her.
“Some time I will put down where we went, the bench beside the little lagoon with the swans where we sat, and all she said. I remember everything perfectly. But I cannot write it down now.
“After I had told her good-night, I went back and did everything we had done together, and recalled everything she had said. I sat for over two hours on the bench where we had sat together. She told me a great deal about herself, and I was right: she has not had a very happy life. And she asked me about myself. I told her all she asked. I told her about the book, and she said sometime she’d like to read the extracts about her in it, and I said she could.
“It is beginning to be dawn. I am glad my window faces east. The sky is pale golden. There is something about the dawn, something sacred. It is like her; I cannot describe how.