something else that happened--remind me of it next time!


THE THIRD RECORD

--Yes, I remember, and you shall hear all about it before I describe an
evening at the Settlement, but it don't amount to much.--I told you how
cross and over-bearing Tuck was at the Astoria tower, and of the mean
way in which he restricted my observations. Well, of all the people in
the grove that day there was only one whom I could see without being
criticized, and he sat all alone and facing me, just behind Tuck's back.
Some green leaves hung between us, and whenever I moved my head to note
what he was doing he moved his, too, to look at me. He seemed so lonely
that I was sorry for him, but his atmosphere showed him to be neither
sullen nor Uranian, and I could not help it if I was just a little bit
responsive. Besides, Tuck, once on the subject of his opera, grew so
self-engrossed and dominant that one had either to assert one's own
mentality or become subjective.

--No, dear, that is not the _only_ reason. There may be such a thing as
an isolated reason, but I have never met one--they always go in packs. I
confess to a feeling of interest in the stranger. Nobody can look at you
with round blue eyes for half an hour steadily without exercising some
attraction, either positive or negative, and I felt, too, that he was
trying to tell me something which would have been a great deal more
interesting than Tuck's opera, and I believe had I remained a little
longer we could have understood each other between the trees just as you
and I can understand each other across the intervals of space. But then
it is so easy to be mistaken.--I had to pass quite close to him in going
out, and I am not sure I did not drop a rose.