The girl was sitting at a large table in a corner of the restaurant,
and he saw with joy that there was a vacant seat immediately opposite
to her. He looked at her as he sat down, but she gave no sign of
recognition. He had hoped that their encounter earlier in the day would
have entitled him to a smile from her, but her features remained
unrelaxed, although he knew that she was aware of him and remembered
him. Her eyes and his had met, and he had been ready to answer her
smile with another smile, but she averted her eyes from his stare and
looked down at her plate. What eyes she had ... grey at one moment and
blue at another as her face turned in the light! When she looked
downwards, he could see long lashes fringing her eyelids, and when she
looked up, the changing colour of her irises and the blue tinge that
suffused the cornea, caused him to think of her eyes as pools of light.
Her face was pale, and in repose it had an appearance of puzzled pathos
that made him feel that he must instantly offer comfort to her, and he
would have done so had not her nervous reticence prevented him. What
would she do if he were to speak to her? There was an illustrated paper
lying close to her plate. He leant across the table and, pointing to
the paper, said, "Are you using that?"
She started, and then, without a smile, said, "No," and passed the
paper to him.
"Thank you!" he murmured, taking it from her.
It was an old paper, and he did not wish to read it, but he had to
pretend to be interested in it, for the girl showed no desire to offer
any more than the casual civilities of one stranger to another. He
hoped that he might suddenly look up and find that she was regarding
him intently ... she would hurriedly glance away from him with an air
of pretty confusion ... but although he looked up at her many times, he
never caught her gazing at him. He wished that she would take her hat,
a wide-brimmed one, off so that he might see her hair. How ridiculous
it was of women to sit at meals with hats on!... He could just see a
wave of dark brown hair under the brim of her hat, flowing across her
broad brow. Her eyebrows were dark and level and very firm, and he
thought how wonderfully the darkness of her eyebrows and her eyelids
and the pallor of her skin served to enrich the beauty of her eyes.
Maggie Carmichael's eyes had had laughter in them ... they seemed
always to be sparkling with merriment ... but this girl's eyes had
tears in them. She might often smile, John told himself, but she would
seldom laugh. Her air of listening for an alarm and the nervous
movement of her fingers made him imagine that a magician had changed
some swift and beautiful and timid animal into a woman. The magicians
in the _Arabian Nights_ frequently turned men and women into
hounds and antelopes, but the process had been reversed with this girl:
an antelope had been turned into a woman.... If only she would give him
an opportunity of speaking to her, of making friends with her! He
suddenly held out the paper to her. "Thank you!" he said.
"It isn't mine," she answered indifferently.
He became confused and clumsy, and he put the paper down on the table
so that it upset a spoon on to the floor with a noise that seemed loud
enough to wake the dead; and as he stooped to pick it up, he pushed the
paper against her plate, causing it almost to fall into her lap.
"I beg your pardon," he exclaimed.
"It's all right," she replied coldly.
He could feel the blood running hotly through his body, and the warm
flush of it spreading over his cheeks. "That was a cut," he said to
himself, and wondered what he should do or say next. What a fool he
must appear to her! ... It would be ridiculous to ask her to tell him
the time, for there was a large and palpable clock over her head so
fixed that he could not fail to see it. It was very odd, he thought,
that she should not wish to speak to him when he so ardently wished to
speak to her. She had finished her meal and he knew that in a moment or
two she would rise and go out of the restaurant. He leant across the
table.
"Miss Moore," he said, "I wish you would be friends with me!"
She looked at him as if she were not certain that he had spoken to her,
and as she saw how earnestly he gazed at her, the expression of her
face changed from one of astonishment to one of alarm.
"Won't you?" he said.
She gave a little gasp and rose hurriedly from her seat.
"Miss Moore!" he said appealingly.
"I don't know you," she replied, hurrying away.
He sat still. It seemed to him that every person in the restaurant must
be looking at him and condemning him for his behaviour. He had spoken
to a girl who did not know him, and he had frightened her. The look of
alarm in her face was unmistakable. What must she think of him? Would
she ever believe that he had no wish to frighten her, that he wished
only to be her friend, to talk to her? If he had told her that he did
not know anyone in London and was feeling miserably lonely, perhaps she
would have been kind to him ... but what opportunity had he had to tell
her anything. Well, that was the end of that! He was not likely to see
Eleanor Moore again, and even if he were, he could hardly hope, after
such a rebuff, to win her friendship unless a miracle were to
happen ... and he had begun to feel dubious about miracles since he had
arrived in London. Perhaps, if he were to follow her and explain
matters to her!...
He hurried out of the restaurant, and stood for a moment or two on the
pavement glancing up and down the street. She was turning out of the
lane into Queen Victoria Street, and as he stood looking at her, she
turned round the corner and he lost sight of her.
"I'll go after her," he said.