So November went by, and a great part of December. Christmas was approaching, and I was eager to have it over. Not that it mattered to me; but the sense that there was a gay companionship in the world from which I was excluded got slightly on my nerves. Cantyre, who came down to spend a week-end with me whenever he could, having to go for that season to his relatives in Ohio, I looked for nothing more festal than a merry meal with Lovey.
The late afternoon on the day before Christmas Eve was both windy and foggy, with a dash of drizzle in the air. The men had knocked off working, and as I left the half-finished building I stood for a minute to get the puffs of wet wind in my face. The lights along the Board Walk were reflected on the wet planks as in a blurred mirror. Here and there a pedestrian beat his way against the wind, and an occasional rolling-chair—the jinrikisha of Atlantic City—disappeared into the aureole of the sea-front.
As I came down our rickety temporary steps I became aware that a woman’s figure darted out of the shelter of a pavilion on the shore edge and walked rapidly across toward me. She wore an ulster and a tam-o’-shanter cap, and made a gallant little figure in the wind. More than that I did not take time to notice, as I had no suspicion that she could have anything to do with me.
I was, in fact, turning southward toward the house where I was staying when she managed to beat her way in front of me.
I could think of nothing better to say than, “On an evening like this?”
“Oh, I don’t mind that. We arrived only this afternoon. You see, my father can’t get back from California, and mother wouldn’t spend Christmas in town. We’re not going to have any Christmas, and so—”
We struggled across the walk to the pavilion, which, though open on all sides, afforded at least an overhead protection.
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked, stupidly.
“Ralph Coningsby told me—and the time you would be coming out. I—I’ve something—something rather special to—to say to you.”
I stood looking down at her. In the wooden ceiling above our heads there was an electric light that shed its beams through the whirl of mist right into her upturned face. There was a piteous quiver in the scarlet lips, and to the eyes had returned that mingling of compassion and amazement with which she had watched me when I pulled out her trinkets and threw them on the desk. It was the first time I had seen it since that night.
