Page:Malvina of Brittany - Jerome (1916).djvu/300

 them to himself. But at Cambridge Gate, when the little fawn gloves came in view, the words would run away, to join him again maybe at the gate into the Chester Road, leaving him meanwhile to pass her with stiff, hurried steps and eyes fixed straight in front of him. And so it might have continued, but that one evening she was no longer at her usual seat. A crowd of noisy children swarmed over it, and suddenly it seemed to him as if the trees and flowers had all turned drab. A terror gnawed at his heart, and he hurried on, more for the need of movement than with any definite object. And just beyond a bed of geraniums that had hidden his view she was seated on a chair, and stopping with a jerk absolutely in front of her, he said, quite angrily:

"Oh! there you are!"

Which was not a bit the speech with which he had intended to introduce himself, but served his purpose just as well—perhaps better.

She did not resent his words or the tone.

"It was the children," she explained. They wanted to play; so I thought I would come on a little farther."