Part 4 (1/2)
”She isn't as beautiful as someone else I know,” said Floyd, pleasantly.
”Isn't she? As whom?”
Floyd took hold of the child's hand and said, ”Let's go and get some supper.”
”I don't like her,” said the little girl, positively.
”Don't you?” said Floyd. He stopped and glanced across the room toward where the girl had stood. He saw only the gleam of her fine shoulders as she disappeared in the crowd surrounded by her admirers.
A little later Floyd met the young lady on the stairway. He had not recognized her, and was pa.s.sing on, when she spoke to him.
”I saw you talking to a little friend of mine,” she began, then--”Over in the corner,” she explained.
”Oh! yes. She is sweet. They interest me. I always feel when I have talked with a child as if I had got as near to the angels as one can get on earth.”
”Do you know I was very anxious to meet you,” she said.
”Were you? Thank you. Why?”
”Because of a line of yours I once read.”
”I am pleased to have written only one line that attracted your attention,” said Floyd, bowing.
”No, no--it was this--”The whitest soul of man or saint is black beside a girl's.”
”Beside a child's,” said Floyd, correcting her.
”Oh! yes, so it is--'beside a child's.'”
Her voice was low and musical. Floyd glanced up and caught her look, and the color deepened in her cheek as the young man suddenly leant a little towards her and gazed earnestly into her eyes, which she dropped, but instantly raised again.
”Yes--good-night,” she held out her hand, with a taking gesture and smile.
”Good-night,” said Floyd, and pa.s.sed on up the stairs to the dressing-room. He got his coat and hat and came down the stairway. A group seized him.
”Come to the club,” they said. He declined.
”Roast oysters and beer,” they said.
”No, I'm going home.”
”Are you ill?” asked a friend.
”No, not at all. Why?”
”You look like a man who has seen a spirit.”
”Do I? I'm tired, I suppose. Good-night,--good-night, gentlemen,” and he pa.s.sed out.
”Perhaps I have,” he said as he went down the cold steps into the frozen street.