Chapter ONE

No sooner had she got inside the door than the tears began to fall; and all the way up the four flights of dark stairway they were raining down her cheeks. She had to wipe them away before she could see to put the latchkey into the lock.

Everything neat, orderly, familiar; just as she had left it a few hours ago, and all seeming in its blank sobriety to rebuke her for her desperate hopes. She went into her own bare and chilly little room and lay down on the cot there, sobbing forlornly, clutching in her hand the card he had given her--a sort of talisman by means of which she could reconstruct the enchanted hour of that afternoon. She remembered every word he had said, every detail of his appearance. And, recollecting them, wept all the more to think what she must forego.

“_Of course_, I’ll never see him again!” she cried. “I’ll have to forget all about him....”

But she knew that she could not forget him. It seemed to her that she had never seen so remarkable, so attractive a person. His face, when he had turned round, that thin, dark face with its haughty nose, the underlip scornfully protruding, the serious regard of his black eyes....

She had not particularly noticed him at first, except as a gaunt and rather shabby young man sitting on the bench behind her on top of the bus. She had been absorbed in watching Fifth Avenue, which had, on that bright October afternoon, the absurd and exciting festival air it so unaccountably assumes. She was solemnly happy, singing under her breath, looking down at the people, the shops, the motor cars that were going by; when there came a sudden violent jolt and the coin she was holding had leaped out of her hand and fallen to the street below. And it was the only one she had!

She had sprung up in a panic; ready to jump off the bus and walk all the long way home, but at the top of the little stairway she had met the conductor coming up.

“FARE!” he had said, with suspicion.

“I just dropped it--a minute ago!” she explained. “I was ... I had a quarter in my hand--and it fell out....”

“Oh, it did, did it?” said he.

“I’ll get off at once,” she said.

“Oh, yes!” said the conductor. “Of course you dropped it! But you just happened to be where you wanted to get off when you dropped it, though, didn’t you?”

She gave a miserable, deprecating smile, anxious only to escape from this humiliation, to get away. When suddenly that young man had got up, put a dime into the conductor’s register, and raised his hat ceremoniously to Rosaleen.

“Allow me!” he had said.

“OH! Thank you!” she had cried. “Thank you!...”

“Not at all!” said he.

She had resumed her seat on the bench ahead of him, and tried to look with exaggerated interest at the street. But she was terribly distressed. She felt that she hadn’t said enough--not nearly enough. Surely she ought at least to suggest repaying him, or something of that sort;--not to sit there and ride along, with her back turned to him.

And though of course she couldn’t know it, he was just as troubled. He had heard her say that she had dropped a quarter, and it occurred to him that she might very well need the rest of it badly, for more carfare, perhaps, or something else very necessary.... In the course of time the idea became intolerable. He leaned forward and touched her gently on the shoulder; and she had turned to regard him with alarmed grey eyes.

“I beg your pardon...” he began. “But ... I’d be very glad ... if you would permit me....”

He saw that she didn’t comprehend.

“I overheard you say that it was a quarter you had dropped,” he said. “If you--perhaps you particularly wanted the change...?”

“Oh!... No!... No, thank you very much, indeed, but I don’t. I’m going right home. I--No, thank you just the same!”

She was so immeasurably grateful that she could not bear to turn her back on him; she faced him, confused, but smiling, passionately anxious to be nice to one who had been so nice to her.

“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” she had said.

“Yes, it is!” said he. “Very!”

She kept on smiling, but it was a strained and wretched smile, and the colour in her cheeks deepened. A ridiculous, an intolerable situation! She couldn’t keep on in that way, twisted half round in her seat, and smiling and smiling.... She _had_ to turn away.

But a little later she turned back again.

“Isn’t that florist’s window lovely?” she had said.

“Yes, it is!” he answered. “Very!”

He, too, wished to be nice, but couldn’t; and once she had resumed her normal position, although then he thought of a number of things he wished to say, he couldn’t suddenly make remarks to her back. Neither could he touch her on the shoulder again, for he considered that would be vulgar. So after much thought, he finally got up and standing beside her and holding fast to the back of the seat to keep his footing on the lurching deck, he asked her if she could tell him what building that was?

She did so, gladly.

“I haven’t been in the city long,” he said, with a chivalrous desire to give her information about himself. “I’m from Charleston.”

“Oh, are you? Do you like it here?”

“No,” he answered, promptly. “Not much.”

She was a little taken aback at that, and while she was thinking of a polite rejoinder, the young man had taken from his pocket a leather case, and was proffering a card.

MR. NICHOLAS LANDRY.

“Thank you!” she murmured.

He waited a moment, hoping perhaps for some sort of reciprocation, but none came. So--

“May I sit down?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, do!” she answered.

A long time seemed to go by.

“I wish--” he said, and paused. “I wish I could see you again.”

There was a sort of self-assurance about him that somehow inspired her with confidence in him. It had not the least trace of effrontery, nor was there anything ingratiating about him. His air seemed to tell her that, if she didn’t want to see him, she need only say so, and that would be the end of it. He was quiet, courteous, but far from humble. He was, in fact, rather lordly. And she liked it.

“Well...” she began. “I--I’d like to--pay you back that fare....”

“Perhaps you’d let me call?”

He was startled at her vehemence.

“Oh, no!” she cried. “Oh, no! You couldn’t! I’m sorry--but you couldn’t!”

Her face had grown crimson and her eyes were filled with tears, and she kept her head resolutely turned aside.

This surprised, embarrassed and a little annoyed him. Did she think he was trying to force himself upon her? He said nothing more after that.

But at last, as they drew near his corner, he spoke again.

“Well!” he said, rising, with a slight sigh. “I’m sorry!”

She turned quickly.

“If--if you’d like ... to-morrow ... in the Fifth Avenue Library...?”

Again he was surprised, amazed at this sudden and anxious invitation. But he politely concealed his surprise.

“Nothing I’d like better,” he said. “What time?”

“About three?”

“I’ll be there!” he assured her. “Just where?”

“Oh ... that hall that goes down to the circulating room....”

He stretched out his hand to ring the bell.

“But you haven’t told me your name!” he said.

“Oh! Rosaleen!” she said. “Rosaleen--Humbert.”

Then once more raising his hat with a smile that enthralled her, he had vanished down the stairs, and a moment later she had seen him going down a side street--a lean young figure with a long stride.

* * * * *

“I shan’t go!” she sobbed. “Of course not! What would be the sense? I’d just better forget all about him.”

“It wouldn’t be fair!” she went on. “Because--if he knew ... he wouldn’t want to see me....”

Useless to recollect newspaper tales of dukes and chorus girls, of millionaires and waitresses, of Cophetua and the beggar maid in all its modern guises. All those people were different. There was no other man like him, no other woman like her. What is more, Rosaleen had no faith in romance. Had not her history been what _anyone_ would call romantic, and wasn’t it as cruel and dull and cold as any life could be?

She sat up and dried her eyes.

“No!” she said. “No use thinking about it.... No use making a fool of myself.”

It had grown quite dark. She got up and lighted the flaring gas jet on a wall bracket, and looked at the big impudent face of the alarm clock standing on her austere bureau top. And at the same time caught sight of her own face, stained and swollen with tears, but still lovely in its pure young outline, with the wise innocence of those drowned grey eyes. The type one calls “flower-like,” with the exquisite fineness of her old, old race, the deep set eyes, the passionate and sensitive mouth, the strange look of resignation. She was rather fair, with light brown hair and a sweet and healthy colour; she was slender and not very tall; she looked fragile, but she was not. She had a strength, an energy, an endurance beyond measure.

An endurance well known and profited by in this household. She brushed her fine hair and pinned it up tightly and carelessly; she bathed her eyes in cold water and tied an apron about her waist. And went along the corridor of the dark, old-fashioned flat to the kitchen. All neat as a pin there. Potatoes closely pared, soaking in cold water, lettuce in a wet cloth, a jar of lard set to cool on the window sill, ready for the inevitable frying. She set to work briskly to prepare the supper, and when it was cooking on the stove, she set up the ironing board and began to press a pile of napkins and handkerchiefs. And began to sing to herself in a low and mournful voice.

At six o’clock came the expected sound of a key in the latch, and presently a venerable grey-bearded old gentleman put his head into the kitchen.

“Well! Well! Well!” he said, benevolently. “Aha! Something very savoury there, I think, Rosaleen!”

“I hope you’ll like it,” she said, smiling.

“Will it be long?”

“Not an instant. I’ll set the table now. Shall we wait for Miss Amy?”

“I think not. I think not. Better get it over with, eh?”

She smiled again, and putting up the ironing board, began at once to lay the table for three. The venerable old gentleman had vanished into his room, and was seen no more until she knocked on his door.

“Dinner!” she said.

He came out again very promptly, closing the door behind him, and took his place at the head of the table. He bowed his grey head, Rosaleen bent her sleek one, and he said a solemn grace. And then set to work to carve the scraggy little steak. It didn’t take much to make him grateful; their standard of living wasn’t exalted; tough meat, with potatoes and a canned vegetable, that was the regulation; then as a dessert either canned fruit or a pie from the baker’s. And the lettuce, which it was considered necessary for his health that Mr. Humbert should eat every evening.

Rosaleen sat opposite him, still in her apron, thankful for once for his inhuman indifference. He wouldn’t notice that she had been crying. They didn’t talk; they never did. What could they possibly have to say to each other?

The light from two jets in the gasolier over the table shone clearly, illumined every corner. All quite neat and clean, with a sort of bright stuffiness about it; a greenish brown carpet on the floor, a couch bed concealed by a green corduroy cover, four varnished oak chairs spaced primly against the wall. In one corner stood a sewing machine covered with a lace tablecloth, on which was a fern in a pot decorated with a frill of green crêpe paper. On the mantelpiece stood a geranium similarly ornamented, and on the table another. From the gasolier and from the curtain pole over the doorway were suspended half coconut shells filled with ferns. Hanging in the windows by gilt chains were two “transparencies”; one was moonlight in Venice, all a ghastly green, and the other was a church with lighted windows gleaming redly over the snow: no doubt they were to compensate for the lack of any view except that of the wall of a courtyard. Nothing in this familiar hideousness to arrest Rosaleen’s glance; she looked restlessly about, longing for the venerable old gentleman to have done with his coconut custard pie.

At last (of course) he did.

“Don’t forget to save something for Miss Amy!” he said, and disappeared again into his cubicle.

While Rosaleen went about her solitary work, washed the dishes, scoured the pots, boiled the dishtowels and hung them to dry, swept the floor, and at last could put out the gas and go away, leaving her domain in perfect order. Nothing more to be done....

Then was the time when the pain, the unhappiness which she had thought to be conquered, and lost in resignation, came back to her again, stronger, more bitter than ever. In all her hard life there had never been anything so hard as the renunciation of this unknown young man.

“But I won’t go to meet him!” she said. “He’d be sure to find out. And then it would be all the worse.... Now I’ve only seen him once, and if I never see him again, I’ll soon forget him. Oh, much, much better not to go!”

“But if he liked me _very_ much, he wouldn’t care _who_ I was!”

That thought, however, held no consolation. He _would_ care. She knew it. She had read in every feature of his face the most obstinate and tyrannical pride.

“But maybe he’d never find out?” she persisted, desperately.

And looked and looked in the mirror, with fervent anxiety. One might have thought she expected to see her secret stamped on her brow.