Chance

I thought to myself that this was not accidental. He had been observing

her. I felt certain also that he had not been asking any questions of

Mrs. Fyne.

"I wouldn't look at him," said Flora de Barral. "I had done with looking

at people. He said to me: 'My sister does not put herself out much for

us. We had better keep each other company. I have read every book there

is in that cottage.' I walked on. He did not leave me. I thought he

ought to. But he didn't. He didn't seem to notice that I would not talk

to him."

She was now perfectly still. The wretched little parasol hung down

against her dress from her joined hands. I was rigid with attention. It

isn't every day that one culls such a volunteered tale on a girl's lips.

The ugly street-noises swelling up for a moment covered the next few

words she said. It was vexing. The next word I heard was "worried."

"It worried you to have him there, walking by your side."

"Yes. Just that," she went on with downcast eyes. There was something

prettily comical in her attitude and her tone, while I pictured to myself

a poor white-faced girl walking to her death with an unconscious man

striding by her side. Unconscious? I don't know. First of all, I felt

certain that this was no chance meeting. Something had happened before.

Was he a man for a coup-de-foudre, the lightning stroke of love? I

don't think so. That sort of susceptibility is luckily rare. A world of

inflammable lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type would very soon end in

barbarism and misery. But it is a fact that in every man (not in every

woman) there lives a lover; a lover who is called out in all his

potentialities often by the most insignificant little things--as long as

they come at the psychological moment: the glimpse of a face at an

unusual angle, an evanescent attitude, the curve of a cheek often looked

at before, perhaps, but then, at the moment, charged with astonishing

significance. These are great mysteries, of course. Magic signs.

I don't know in what the sign consisted in this case. It might have been

her pallor (it wasn't pasty nor yet papery) that white face with eyes

like blue gleams of fire and lips like red coals. In certain lights, in

certain poises of head it suggested tragic sorrow. Or it might have been

her wavy hair. Or even just that pointed chin stuck out a little,

resentful and not particularly distinguished, doing away with the

mysterious aloofness of her fragile presence. But any way at a given

moment Anthony must have suddenly seen the girl. And then, that

something had happened to him. Perhaps nothing more than the thought

coming into his head that this was "a possible woman."