The Game | Page 8

back to the candy shop. He solaced his fear with, "I ain't
a ladies' man." Not once, nor twice, but scores of times, he muttered the
thought to himself, but it did no good. And by the middle of the week,
in the evening, after work, he came into the shop. He tried to come in
carelessly and casually, but his whole carriage advertised the strong
effort of will that compelled his legs to carry his reluctant body thither.
Also, he was shy, and awkwarder than ever. Genevieve, on the contrary,
was serener than ever, though fluttering most alarmingly within. He
was incapable of speech, mumbled his order, looked anxiously at the
clock, despatched his ice-cream soda in tremendous haste, and was
gone.
She was ready to weep with vexation. Such meagre reward for four
days' waiting, and assuming all the time that she loved! He was a nice

boy and all that, she knew, but he needn't have been in so disgraceful a
hurry. But Joe had not reached the corner before he wanted to be back
with her again. He just wanted to look at her. He had no thought that it
was love. Love? That was when young fellows and girls walked out
together. As for him--And then his desire took sharper shape, and he
discovered that that was the very thing he wanted her to do. He wanted
to see her, to look at her, and well could he do all this if she but walked
out with him. Then that was why the young fellows and girls walked
out together, he mused, as the week-end drew near. He had remotely
considered this walking out to be a mere form or observance
preliminary to matrimony. Now he saw the deeper wisdom in it,
wanted it himself, and concluded therefrom that he was in love.
Both were now of the same mind, and there could be but the one
ending; and it was the mild nine days' wonder of Genevieve's
neighborhood when she and Joe walked out together.
Both were blessed with an avarice of speech, and because of it their
courtship was a long one. As he expressed himself in action, she
expressed herself in repose and control, and by the love-light in her
eyes--though this latter she would have suppressed in all maiden
modesty had she been conscious of the speech her heart printed so
plainly there. "Dear" and "darling" were too terribly intimate for them
to achieve quickly; and, unlike most mating couples, they did not
overwork the love-words. For a long time they were content to walk
together in the evenings, or to sit side by side on a bench in the park,
neither uttering a word for an hour at a time, merely gazing into each
other's eyes, too faintly luminous in the starshine to be a cause for
self-consciousness and embarrassment.
He was as chivalrous and delicate in his attention as any knight to his
lady. When they walked along the street, he was careful to be on the
outside,--somewhere he had heard that this was the proper thing to
do,--and when a crossing to the opposite side of the street put him on
the inside, he swiftly side-stepped behind her to gain the outside again.
He carried her parcels for her, and once, when rain threatened, her
umbrella. He had never heard of the custom of sending flowers to one's

lady-love, so he sent Genevieve fruit instead. There was utility in fruit.
It was good to eat. Flowers never entered his mind, until, one day, he
noticed a pale rose in her hair. It drew his gaze again and again. It was
HER hair, therefore the presence of the flower interested him. Again, it
interested him because SHE had chosen to put it there. For these
reasons he was led to observe the rose more closely. He discovered that
the effect in itself was beautiful, and it fascinated him. His ingenuous
delight in it was a delight to her, and a new and mutual love-thrill was
theirs--because of a flower. Straightway he became a lover of flowers.
Also, he became an inventor in gallantry. He sent her a bunch of violets.
The idea was his own. He had never heard of a man sending flowers to
a woman. Flowers were used for decorative purposes, also for funerals.
He sent Genevieve flowers nearly every day, and so far as he was
concerned the idea was original, as positive an invention as ever arose
in the mind of man.
He was tremulous in his devotion to her--as tremulous as was she in her
reception of him. She was all that was pure and good, a holy of holies
not lightly to be profaned even by what might possibly be the too
ardent reverence of