The longer the time since she had seen Captain Everard the more she was booked,as she called it,to pass Park Chambers;and this was the sole amusement that in the lingering August days and the twilights sadly drawn out it was left her to cultivate.She had long since learned to know it for a feeble one,though its feebleness was perhaps scarce the reason for her saying to herself each evening as her time for departure approached:"No,no--not to-night."She never failed of that silent remark,any more than she failed of feeling,in some deeper place than she had even yet fully sounded,that one's remarks were as weak as straws and that,however one might indulge in them at eight o'clock,one's fate infallibly declared itself in absolute indifference to them at about eight-fifteen.Remarks were remarks,and very well for that;but fate was fate,and this young lady's was to pass Park Chambers every night in the working week.Out of the immensity of her knowledge of the life of the world there bloomed on these occasions as specific remembrance that it was regarded in that region,in August and September,as rather pleasant just to be caught for something or other in passing through town.Somebody was always passing and somebody might catch somebody else.It was in full cognisance of this subtle law that she adhered to the most ridiculous circuit she could have made to get home.One warm dull featureless Friday,when an accident had made her start from Cocker's a little later than usual,she became aware that something of which the infinite possibilities had for so long peopled her dreams was at last prodigiously upon her,though the perfection in which the conditions happened to present it was almost rich enough to be but the positive creation of a dream.She saw,straight before her,like a vista painted in a picture,the empty street and the lamps that burned pale in the dusk not yet established.It was into the convenience of this quiet twilight that a gentleman on the doorstep of the Chambers gazed with a vagueness that our young lady's little figure violently trembled,in the approach,with the measure of its power to dissipate.Everything indeed grew in a flash terrific and distinct;her old uncertainties fell away from her,and,since she was so familiar with fate,she felt as if the very nail that fixed it were driven in by the hard look with which,for a moment,Captain Everard awaited her.
The vestibule was open behind him and the porter as absent as on the day she had peeped in;he had just come out--was in town,in a tweed suit and a pot hat,but between two journeys--duly bored over his evening and at a loss what to do with it.Then it was that she was glad she had never met him in that way before:she reaped with such ecstasy the benefit of his not being able to think she passed often.She jumped in two seconds to the determination that he should even suppose it to be the very first time and the very oddest chance:this was while she still wondered if he would identify or notice her.His original attention had not,she instinctively knew,been for the young woman at Cocker's;it had only been for any young woman who might advance to the tune of her not troubling the quiet air,and in fact the poetic hour,with ugliness.Ah but then,and just as she had reached the door,came his second observation,a long light reach with which,visibly and quite amusedly,he recalled and placed her.They were on different sides,but the street,narrow and still,had only made more of a stage for the small momentary drama.It was not over,besides,it was far from over,even on his sending across the way,with the pleasantest laugh she had ever heard,a little lift of his hat and an "Oh good evening!"It was still less over on their meeting,the next minute,though rather indirectly and awkwardly,in the middle,of the road--a situation to which three or four steps of her own had unmistakeably contributed--and then passing not again to the side on which she had arrived,but back toward the portal of Park Chambers.
"I didn't know you at first.Are you taking a walk?""Ah I don't take walks at night!I'm going home after my work.""Oh!"
That was practically what they had meanwhile smiled out,and his exclamation to which for a minute he appeared to have nothing to add,left them face to face and in just such an attitude as,for his part,he might have worn had he been wondering if he could properly ask her to come in.During this interval in fact she really felt his question to be just "HOW properly--?"It was simply a question of the degree of properness.