Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/90

 his or the losses of defeat. In either event he could know where he stood.

In a ferment of imagination and anticipation he lounged in Peacock Alley and waited for the coming of the girl with the burnished copper hair.

Half a dozen times he consulted his watch. It did not seem to hasten her arrival in the least. But then, he was a bit early. If you have an appointment with a lady at seven thirty it is absurd to expect her there at seven twenty. He told himself this and contained his impatience as well as he could. It puzzled him a little too, to feel as he did about this girl. He had known women in his life, yet never had he known one to whom he reacted in this curious manner. It seemed to him as though the very fact of her being on the same earth with him touched some vibrant chord in his nature that echoed throughout his whole being. He could have told himself, of course, that he was in love—but does one fall in love with a woman whom he has seen for perhaps less than ten minutes in his whole life?

The answer to that is yes, as he admitted after a few moments’ reflection. It would have been yes if the time had been ten seconds—or ten centuries—or even if he had never seen her. It was enough that, somewhere on this earth, was a woman like Jessica Pomeroy—he did not have to see her, or know her; she was simply the incarnation of an unconscious ideal he had been building up in his mind, an ideal he had created without knowing it, and here suddenly she had come to life like Galatea and he realized of a sudden that he had made her. She was everything he had pictured to himself—and suddenly she stepped down from her pedestal and became Jessica Pomeroy, who was to meet him here in a few minutes.