The Maker of Opportunities

“I beg pardon,” it was saying.

The lifted straw hat, the inclined head, the mellow tones, the gray eyes (again benevolent), however unalarming in themselves, filled her with very real inquietude. Whatever he had done before, this, surely, was insupportable. She was about to turn away when her eye fell upon his extended arm and upon her luckless parasol.

The blood flew to her face again and it was with an embarrassment, a gaucherie, the like of which she could not remember, that she extended her hand toward the errant sunshade. No sound came from her lips; with bent head she took it from him. But as she walked on, she found that he was walking, too – with her, directly at her side. For a moment she was cold with terror.

“I hope you’ll let me go along,” he was saying coolly, “I’m really quite harmless. If you knew – if you only knew how dreadfully bored I’ve been, you really wouldn’t mind me at all.”

Patricia stole a hurried glance at him, her fears curiously diminished.

“I’m what the fallen call a victim of circumstances,” he went on. “I ask no worse fate for my dearest enemy than to be consigned without a friend to this wilderness of whitened stoops and boarded doors – to wait upon your city’s demigod, Procrastination. This I’ve done for forty-eight hours with a dear memory of a past but without a hope for the future. If the Fountain of Youth were to gush hopefully from the office water-cooler of my aged lawyer, he would eye it askance and sigh for the lees of the turbid Schuylkill.”

However she strove to lift her brows, Patricia was smiling now in spite of herself.

“I’ve followed the meandering tide down the narrow cañon you call Chestnut Street, watched the leisurely coal wagon and its attendant tail of trolleys, or sat in my hotel striving to dust aside the accumulating cobwebs, one small unquiet molecule of disconsolation. I’m stranded – marooned. By comparison, Crusoe was gregarious.”

During this while they were walking north. All the way to Chestnut Street, Patricia was wondering whether to be most alarmed or amused. Of one thing she was assured, she was bored no longer. A sense of the violence done to her traditions hung like a millstone around her neck; and yet Patricia found herself peeping avidly through the hole to listen to the seductive voice of unconvention.

When Patricia succeeded in summoning her voice, she was not quite sure that it was her own.

“You’re an impertinent person,” she found herself saying.

“Can’t you forgive?”

“No.”

“Circumstances are against me,” he said, “but I give you my word, I’ve a place in my own city, a friend or two, and a certain proclivity for virtue.”

“Even if you do – speak to strange – ”

“But I don’t. It was the blessed parasol. Otherwise I shouldn’t have dared.”

“And the proclivity for virtue – ”

“Why, that’s exactly the reason. Can’t you see? It was you! You fairly exuded gentility. Come now, I’m humility itself. I’ve sinned. How can I expiate?”

“By letting me go home to dinner.”

Patricia was laughing this time. The man was looking at his watch.

“What a brute I am!” He stopped, took off his hat and turned away. And here it was that some little frivolous genius put unmeditated words upon Patricia’s tongue.

“I’m not so dreadfully hungry,” she said.

After all, he had been impertinent so very courteously.

In a moment he was at her side again.

“That was kind of you. Perhaps you’ve forgiven me.”

“N – no,” with rising inflection.

“Come now! Let’s be friends, just for this little while. Let’s begin at once to believe we’ve known each other always – just for to-night. I will be getting out of town to-morrow and we won’t meet again. I’m certain of that.”

“How can I be sure?” Patricia spoke as though thinking aloud.

“They’ve promised me this time. I’ll go away to-morrow. If my papers aren’t ready I’ll leave without them.”

“Will you give me your word?”

“Upon my honor.”

Patricia turned for the first time and looked directly up at him. What value could she set upon the honor of one she knew not? Whatever the feminine process of examination, she seemed satisfied.

“What can I do? It’s almost dusk.”

“I was about to suggest – er – I thought perhaps you might be willing to – er – go and have a bite – to eat – in fact, dinner.”

Patricia stopped and looked up at him in startled abstraction. The word and its train of associated ideas evolved in significant fashion from her mental topsy-turvy. Dinner! With a strange man in a public place! The prosaic word took new and curious meanings unwritten upon the lexicon of her code. There was the tangible presentation of her sin – that she might read and run while there was yet time. How had it all happened? What had this insolent person said to make it possible for her to forget herself for so long?

With no word of explanation her small feet went hurrying down the hill while his big ones strode protestingly alongside.

“Well?” he said at last.

But she gave him no answer and only walked the faster.

“You’re going?”

“Home – at once.” She spoke with cold incisiveness.

He walked along a few moments in silence – then said assertively:

“You’re afraid.”

For reply she only shook her head.

“It’s true,” he went on. “You’re afraid. A moment ago, you were willing to forget we had just met. Now in a breath you’re willing to forget that we’ve met at all.”

But she would not answer.

He glanced at the poise of the haughty head just below his own. Was it mock virtue? He felt thoroughly justified in believing it so.

They had reached a corner. Patricia stopped.

“You’ll let me go here, won’t you? You’ll not follow me or try to find out anything, will you? Say you won’t, please, please! It has all been a dreadful mistake – how dreadful I didn’t know until – until just now. I must go – alone, you understand – alone – ”

“But it is getting dark, you – ”

“No, no! It doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid. How can I be – now? Please let me go – alone. Good-by!”