A pleasant face it was, upon which, to her surprise, a smile very
suddenly grew into being as though in response to her own. Patricia's
eyes dropped quickly--sedately, as became those of a decorous woman, and
yet in that brief second in which the eyes of the tall young man met
hers, she had noticed that they were gray, as though sun-bleached, but
very clear and sparkling. And when she raised her own to look quite
through and beyond the opposite bench, her conscience refused to deny
that she had enjoyed the looking. Were the eyes smiling _at_, or
_with_ her? In that distinction lay a question in morals. Was their
sparkle quizzical or intrusive? She would have vowed that good humor,
benevolence (if benevolence may be found in the eyes of two and thirty),
and a certain polite interest were its actual ingredients. It was all
very interesting. She surprised herself in a not unlively curiosity as
to his life and calling, and in a lack of any sort of misgiving at the
_contretemps_.
The shadows beneath the wilted trees grew deeper. The sun swept down
into the west and suddenly vanished with all his train of gold and
purple. Patricia stole a furtive look at her neighbor. Triumphantly she
confirmed her diagnosis. The man was lost in the glow of the sunset.
Importunity and he were miles asunder.
It may have been that Patricia's eyes were more potent than the sunset,
or that her triumphant deduction was based upon a false premise, or that
the young man had been watching her all the while from the tail of his
benevolent eye; for without the slightest warning, his head turned
suddenly to find the eyes of the unfortunate Patricia again fixed upon
his. However quickly she might turn aside, the glance exchanged was
long enough to disclose the fact that the sparkle was still there and
to excite a suspicion that it had never been dispelled. Nor did the
character of the smile reassure her. She was not at all certain now that
he was not smiling both _with_ and _at_ her.
The quickly averted head, the toss of the chin, seemed all too
inadequate to the situation; yet she availed herself of those bulwarks
of maiden modesty in virtuous effort to refute the unconscious testimony
of her unlucky eyes. Instinct suggested immediate flight. But Patricia
moved not. Here indeed was a case where flight meant confession. She
felt rather than saw his gaze search her from head to foot, and struggle
as she might against it, the warm color raced to her cheek and brow. If
she had enjoyed the situation a moment before, the impertinence, so
suddenly born, filled her with dismay. By some subtle feminine process
of reasoning, she succeeded in eliminating her share in the trifling
adventure and now saw only the sin of the offending male. At last she
arose, the very presentment of injured and scornful dignity and walked,
looking neither to the left hand nor to the right.
There was a sound of firm, rapid footsteps and then a deep voice at her
elbow.
"I beg pardon," it was saying.
The lifted straw hat, the inclined head, the mellow tones, the gray eyes
(again benevolent), however unalarming in themselves, filled her with
very real inquietude. Whatever he had done before, this, surely, was
insupportable. She was about to turn away when her eye fell upon his
extended arm and upon her luckless parasol.
"I beg pardon," he repeated, "but isn't this yours?"
[Illustration: "'I beg pardon,' he repeated, 'but isn't this yours?'"]
The blood flew to her face again and it was with an embarrassment, a
_gaucherie_, the like of which she could not remember, that she extended
her hand toward the errant sunshade. No sound came from her lips; with
bent head she took it from him. But as she walked on, she found that he
was walking, too--with her, directly at her side. For a moment she
was cold with terror.
"I hope you'll let me go along," he was saying coolly, "I'm really quite
harmless. If you knew--if you only knew how dreadfully bored I've been,
you really wouldn't mind me at all."
Patricia stole a hurried glance at him, her fears curiously diminished.
"I'm what the fallen call a victim of circumstances," he went on. "I ask
no worse fate for my dearest enemy than to be consigned without a friend
to this wilderness of whitened stoops and boarded doors--to wait upon
your city's demigod, Procrastination. This I've done for forty-eight
hours with a dear memory of a past but without a hope for the future.
If the Fountain of Youth were to gush hopefully from the office
water-cooler of my aged lawyer, he would eye it askance and sigh for
the lees of the turbid Schuylkill."
However she strove to lift her brows, Patricia was smiling now in spite
of herself.
"I've followed the meandering tide down the narrow canyon you call
Chestnut Street, watched the leisurely coal wagon and its attendant
tail of trolleys, or sat in my hotel striving to dust aside the
accumulating cobwebs, one small unquiet molecule of disconsolation.
I'm stranded--marooned. By comparison, Crusoe was gregarious."
During this while they were walking north. All the way to Chestnut
Street, Patricia was wondering whether to be most alarmed or amused. Of
one thing she was assured, she was bored no longer. A sense of the
violence done to her traditions hung like a millstone around her neck;
and yet Patricia found herself peeping avidly through the hole to listen
to the seductive voice of unconvention.
When Patricia succeeded in summoning her voice, she was not quite sure
that it was her own.
"You're an impertinent person," she found herself saying.
"Can't you forgive?"
"No."
"Circumstances are against me," he said, "but I give you my word, I've a
place in my own city, a friend or two, and a certain proclivity for
virtue."
"Even if you do--speak to strange----"
"But I don't. It was the blessed parasol. Otherwise I shouldn't have
dared."
"And the proclivity for virtue----"
"Why, that's exactly the reason. Can't you see? It was you! You fairly
exuded gentility. Come now, I'm humility itself. I've sinned. How can I
expiate?"
"By letting me go home to dinner."
Patricia was laughing this time. The man was looking at his watch.
"What a brute I am!" He stopped, took off his hat and turned away. And
here it was that some little frivolous genius put unmeditated words upon
Patricia's tongue.
"I'm not so dreadfully hungry," she said.
After all, he had been impertinent so very courteously.
In a moment he was at her side again.
"That was kind of you. Perhaps you've forgiven me."
"N--no," with rising inflection.
"Come now! Let's be friends, just for this little while. Let's begin at
once to believe we've known each other always--just for to-night. I will
be getting out of town to-morrow and we won't meet again. I'm certain of
that."
"How can I be sure?" Patricia spoke as though thinking aloud.
"They've promised me this time. I'll go away to-morrow. If my papers
aren't ready I'll leave without them."
"Will you give me your word?"
"Upon my honor."
Patricia turned for the first time and looked directly up at him. What
value could she set upon the honor of one she knew not? Whatever the
feminine process of examination, she seemed satisfied.
"What can I do? It's almost dusk."
"I was about to suggest--er--I thought perhaps you might be willing
to--er--go and have a bite--to eat--in fact, dinner."
Patricia stopped and looked up at him in startled abstraction. The word
and its train of associated ideas evolved in significant fashion from her
mental topsy-turvy. Dinner! With a strange man in a public place! The
prosaic word took new and curious meanings unwritten upon the lexicon of
her code. There was the tangible presentation of her sin--that she might
read and run while there was yet time. How had it all happened? What had
this insolent person said to make it possible for her to forget herself
for so long?
With no word of explanation her small feet went hurrying down the hill
while his big ones strode protestingly alongside.
"Well?" he said at last.
But she gave him no answer and only walked the faster.
"You're going?"
"Home--at once." She spoke with cold incisiveness.
He walked along a few moments in silence--then said assertively:
"You're afraid."
For reply she only shook her head.
"It's true," he went on. "You're afraid. A moment ago, you were willing
to forget we had just met. Now in a breath you're willing to forget that
we've met at all."
But she would not answer.
He glanced at the poise of the haughty head just below his own. Was it
mock virtue? He felt thoroughly justified in believing it so.
They had reached a corner. Patricia stopped.
"You'll let me go here, won't you? You'll not follow me or try to find
out anything, will you? Say you won't, please, please! It has all been
a dreadful mistake--how dreadful I didn't know until--until just now. I
must go--alone, you understand--alone----"
"But it is getting dark, you----"
"No, no! It doesn't matter. I'm not afraid. How can I be--now? Please
let me go--alone. Good-by!"
And in a moment she had vanished in the cross street.