accustomed. She could answer only with monosyllables or appreciative looks, though usually she was a great talker and, as she had much common sense and not a little wit, a good talker. But her awe of him, which increased when she learned that he was on the stage, did not prevent her from getting the two main impressions he wished to make upon her—that Mr. Feuerstein was a very grand person indeed, and that he was condescending to be profoundly smitten of her charms. 

 She was the "catch" of Avenue A, taking prospects and looks together, and the men she knew had let her rule them. In Mr. Feuerstein she had found what she had been unconsciously seeking with the Idealismus of genuine youth—a man who compelled her to look far up to him, a man who seemed to her to embody those vague dreams of a life grand and beautiful, away off somewhere, which are dreamed by all young people, and by not a few older ones, who have less excuse for not knowing where happiness is to be found. He spent the whole evening with her; Mrs. Liebers and Sophie, with whom she had come, did not dare interrupt her pleasure, but had to stay, yawning and cross, until the last strain of Home, Sweet Home. 

 At parting he pressed her hand.  "I have been happy," he murmured in a tone which said, "Mine is a sorrow-shadowed soul that has rarely tasted happiness." 

 She glanced up at him with ingenuous feeling in her eyes and managed to stammer:  "I hope we'll meet again." 

 "Couldn't I come down to see you Sunday evening?" 

 "There's a concert in the Square. If you're there I might see you." 

 "Until Sunday night," he said, and made her feel that the three intervening days would be for him three eternities. 

 She thought of him all the way home in the car, and until she fell asleep. His sonorous name was in her mind when she awoke in the morning; and, as she stood in the store that day, waiting on the customers, she looked often at the door, and, with the childhood-surviving faith of youth in the improbable and impossible, hoped that he would appear. For the first time she was definitely discontented with her lot, was definitely fascinated by the idea that there might be something higher and finer than the simple occupations and simple enjoyments which had filled her life thus far. 

 

 In the 

 Prev. P 4/78 next