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."