Seventeen | Page 5

empty of all human life, at the time, save for those two; and she was
upon the same side of the street that he was; thus it became inevitable
that they should meet, face to face, for the first time in their lives. He
had perceived, even in the distance, that she was unknown to him, a
stranger, because he knew all the girls in this part of the town who
dressed as famously in the mode as that! And then, as the distance
between them lessened, he saw that she was ravishingly pretty; far, far
prettier, indeed, than any girl he knew. At least it seemed so, for it is,
unfortunately, much easier for strangers to be beautiful. Aside from this
advantage of mystery, the approaching vision was piquant and graceful

enough to have reminded a much older boy of a spotless white kitten,
for, in spite of a charmingly managed demureness, there was precisely
that kind of playfulness somewhere expressed about her. Just now it
was most definite in the look she bent upon the light and fluffy burden
which she carried nestled in the inner curve of her right arm: a tiny dog
with hair like cotton and a pink ribbon round his neck--an animal sated
with indulgence and idiotically unaware of his privilege. He was half
asleep!
William did not see the dog, or it is the plain, anatomical truth that
when he saw how pretty the girl was, his heart--his physical heart--
began to do things the like of which, experienced by an elderly person,
would have brought the doctor in haste. In addition, his complexion
altered--he broke out in fiery patches. He suffered from breathlessness
and from pressure on the diaphragm.
Afterward, he could not have named the color of the little parasol she
carried in her left hand, and yet, as it drew nearer and nearer, a rosy
haze suffused the neighborhood, and the whole world began to turn an
exquisite pink. Beneath this gentle glow, with eyes downcast in thought,
she apparently took no note of William, even when she and William
had come within a few yards of each other. Yet he knew that she would
look up and that their eyes must meet--a thing for which he endeavored
to prepare himself by a strange weaving motion of his neck against the
friction of his collar--for thus, instinctively, he strove to obtain greater
ease and some decent appearance of manly indifference. He felt that his
efforts were a failure; that his agitation was ruinous and must be
perceptible at a distance of miles, not feet. And then, in the instant of
panic that befell, when her dark-lashed eyelids slowly lifted, he had a
flash of inspiration.
He opened his mouth somewhat, and as her eyes met his, full and
startlingly, he placed three fingers across the orifice, and also offered a
slight vocal proof that she had surprised him in the midst of a yawn.
``Oh, hum!'' he said.
For the fraction of a second, the deep blue spark in her eyes glowed
brighter--gentle arrows of turquoise shot him through and through--and
then her glance withdrew from the ineffable collision. Her small,
white-shod feet continued to bear her onward, away from him, while
his own dimmed shoes peregrinated in the opposite direction--William

necessarily, yet with excruciating reluctance, accompanying them. But
just at the moment when he and the lovely creature were side by side,
and her head turned from him, she spoke that is, she murmured, but he
caught the words.
``You Flopit, wake up!'' she said, in the tone of a mother talking
baby-talk. ``SO indifferink!''
William's feet and his breath halted spasmodically. For an instant he
thought she had spoken to him, and then for the first time he perceived
the fluffy head of the dog bobbing languidly over her arm, with the
motion of her walking, and he comprehended that Flopit, and not
William Sylvanus Baxter, was the gentleman addressed. But--but had
she MEANT him?
His breath returning, though not yet operating in its usual manner, he
stood gazing after her,
while the glamorous parasol passed down the shady street, catching
splashes of sunshine through the branches of the maple-trees; and the
cottony head of the tiny dog continued to be visible, bobbing
rhythmically over a filmy sleeve. Had she meant that William was
indifferent? Was it William that she really addressed?
He took two steps to follow her, but a suffocating shyness stopped him
abruptly and, in a horror lest she should glance round and detect him in
the act, he turned and strode fiercely to the gate of his own home before
he dared to look again. And when he did look, affecting great
casualness in the action, she was gone, evidently having turned the
corner. Yet the