Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/62



ILLIAM was never able to explain with any lucidity why he leaped so abruptly to such a conclusion. He just knew, that was all. He had seen those feet go past his cellar window too many times to have the slightest doubt of their identity.

He had not seen her face, the railing having cut across that and obscured it. But there was no reason on earth why he shouldn't see the face now, after waiting for three years. So he sprang up the ladder, thrilling in every pulse. There she was, leaning against the port rail, staring westward at the pearly smudge hanging over the receding city. William had never heard of Medusa, nor the shield of Perseus. He was, nevertheless, turned into stone for two consecutive minutes. There is nothing gentle or gradual about disillusion; it is a blow, swift and hurtful. William stood up under it passably well, however.

Yonder was his school-teacher, without doubt; but she was also the young woman he had sat beside at the movie and whom he had mentally tangled up with runaway wives and all that. Finding his dream slipping from him, he made frantic efforts to catch hold and retain some of it. He simply could not let it go all at once. For