Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Novelists -- Fiction; Secretaries -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction; West Indies -- Fiction
No. -- West Forty-fifth Street.
I was all impatience till I read the very latest line, fearing there
would be some qualification that I could not meet. When I found that it
had resolved itself into a question so easily solved I sprang up and
shouted in glee.
She would go! She was going! My dream was to become a reality!
Seizing a sheet of paper I began to write a note in response to the one
I had received. She might get it only a short time before the hour of
two, but it would prepare her for my coming, and clinch the bargain a
little sooner. For five minutes I wrote rapidly, and when I stopped to
peruse the lines I tore up the sheet.
Had she been my sweetheart for ages I could hardly have used more
extravagant language than I had been guilty of on that first page. Would
I never learn the first principles of common sense? I had begun with the
words, "My Darling Marjorie," and gone on to state that "your sweet
letter fills me with supreme happiness;" "I shall not breathe until once
more I am in your loved presence.
"Already I contemplate those heavenly hours when you and I will sail out
upon the seas of Elysium," was another sample sentence, a type of the
others. I paused in the rapid walk that I took up and down my room to
look in my mirror, and was almost frightened at what I saw there. My
cheeks were suffused with unusual color, my eyes dilated, my hair
dishevelled, where I had run my nervous hands through it. My collar was
rumpled, my tie disarranged, and in a room where the mercury was not
above seventy the beads of perspiration stood on my forehead.
Dame! I went to the bath-room that formed a part of my little suite, let
the icy water run till it filled the bowl and bathed my hands and face
in it. Slowly I dried them with the towel, and then applied bay rum in
liberal quantity.
I realized disagreeably for the hundredth time how that awful
neurasthenia had left its traces upon me, and that if I was ever to
wholly recover I must regain control of my emotions. With this in view
I again seated myself at my desk and indited the following:
Dear Miss May:--It is with much satisfaction that I have perused
your letter. The amount necessary to purchase the articles you need
shall be left entirely to you. I will furnish whatever sum you
decide upon. I will be at your lodging promptly at two. If there is
anything else that occurs to you, please consider yourself at full
liberty to mention it then. In the meantime I am going to Cook's
office to pay the balance on the two rooms, as the time for doing so
will soon expire.
Your Friend,
D.C.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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