Page:Charlotte Teller - The Cage (1907).djvu/73

 there. Lange must have forgotten that. Disappointment brought her to a standstill, and she was divided between the desire to turn back and the bolder desire to go on and face these men, and in some way get into the yard. She peered through the dusk and her heart beat hard; she recognized Gustav Lange, and he was talking to a policeman. Without knowing that she moved she crept nearer. Suddenly she turned and almost ran back to the comer and around it, where she leaned against the high fence—she had recognized her father.

In that moment of recognition she felt suddenly wicked. Romance grew sinister and faced her, demanding that she admit where she was going. She did not wonder why her father and Lange were there in conversation; she was thinking only of herself. Suppose her father should come to this corner! She began to run in the shadow of the fence, a little self-accused figure of trepidation. But again she stopped, because she remembered that his regular beat was in the other direction. And Lange! Perhaps he had been waiting for her and was going away; perhaps she had mistaken the time. It did seem darker than it was usually at half -past seven.

When she thought of Lange leaving she turned and retraced her steps to the comer, and standing close to the fence, looked around it. Michael Flanagan was almost at the other corner, walking in official calmness, swinging his billy. Lange was not in sight. Maggie watched her father turn the corner. Should she go home where her mother sat shiftlessly rocking, and the children were having their usual bedtime quarrels? Romance and curiosity had both left her; the desire to see Lange was not pulling at her as it had at first; but the picture of her home, and the thought of the dull hours she would 63