The Incomplete Amorist

Once in the park she was safe. Her shoes and her skirts were wet with dew. She made haste. She did not want to keep him waiting.

But she was first at the rendezvous, after all.

She sat down on the carpet of pine needles. How pretty the early morning was. The sunlight was quite different from the evening sunlight, so much lighter and brighter. And the shadows were different. She tried to settle on a point of view for her sketch, the sketch he was to help her with.

Her thoughts went back to what she had written in her diary. If that should be true she must be very, very careful. He must never guess it, never. She would be very cold and distant and polite. Not hail-fellow well-met with a "brother artist," like she had been yesterday. It was all very difficult indeed. Even if it really did turn out to be true, if the wonderful thing had happened to her, if she really was in love she would not try a bit to make him like her. That would be forward and "horrid." She would never try to attract any man. Those things must come of themselves or not at all.

She arranged her skirt in more effective folds, and wondered how it would look as one came up the woodland path. She thought it would look rather picturesque. It was a nice heliotrope colour. It would look like a giant Parma violet against the dark green background. She hoped her hair was tidy. And that her hat was not very crooked. However little one desires to attract, one may at least wish one's hat to be straight.

She looked for the twentieth time at her watch, the serviceable silver watch that had been her mother's. Half-past six, and he had not come.

Well, when he did come she would pretend she had only just got there. Or how would it be if she gave up being a Parma violet and went a little way down the path and then turned back when she heard him coming? She walked away a dozen yards and stood waiting. But he did not come. Was it possible that he was not coming? Was he ill--lying uncared for at the Peal of Bells in the village, with no one to smooth his pillow or put eau-de-cologne on his head?

She walked a hundred yards or so towards the village on the spur of this thought.

Or perhaps he had come by another way to the trysting place? That thought drove her back. He was not there.