She saw her in fact, and only ten days later; but this time not alone,
and that was exactly a part of the luck of it. Not unaware—as how could
her observation have left her so?—of the possibilities through which it
could range, our young lady had ever since had in her mind a dozen
conflicting theories about Everard’s type; as to which, the instant
they came into the place, she felt the point settled with a thump that
seemed somehow addressed straight to her heart. That organ literally
beat faster at the approach of the gentleman who was this time with
Cissy, and who, as seen from within the cage, became on the spot the
happiest of the happy circumstances with which her mind had invested
the friend of Fritz and Gussy. He was a very happy circumstance indeed
as, with his cigarette in his lips and his broken familiar talk caught
by his companion, he put down the half-dozen telegrams it would take
them together several minutes to dispatch. And here it occurred, oddly
enough, that if, shortly before the girl’s interest in his companion
had sharpened her sense for the messages then transmitted, her
immediate vision of himself had the effect, while she counted his
seventy words, of preventing intelligibility. _His_ words were mere
numbers, they told her nothing whatever; and after he had gone she was
in possession of no name, of no address, of no meaning, of nothing but
a vague sweet sound and an immense impression. He had been there but
five minutes, he had smoked in her face, and, busy with his telegrams,
with the tapping pencil and the conscious danger, the odious betrayal
that would come from a mistake, she had had no wandering glances nor
roundabout arts to spare. Yet she had taken him in; she knew
everything; she had made up her mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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