Fiction > Book editions > London, 1885 - Dynamiter

THE UKOWN BOX. 179
The next day, and tlie next, liis meditations moved
to that delectable air. Now he saw her, and was
fa^■Oll^ed; now saw her not at all; now saw her and
was put by. The fall of her foot upon the stair entranced
him ; the books that he sought out and read, were books
on Cuba and spoke of her indirectly ; nay, and in the
very landlady's parlour, he found one that told of pre-
cisely such a hurricane and, down to the smallest detail,
confirmed (had confirmation been required) the truth of
her recital. Presently he began to fall into that prettiest
mood of a young love, in which the lover scorns himself
for his presumption. AYlio was he, the dull one, the
commonplace unemployed, the man without adventure,
the impure, the untruthful, to aspire to such a creature
made of fire and air, and hallowed and adorned by such
incomparable passages of life ? What should he do, to
be more worthy ? by what devotion, call down the notice
of these eyes to so terrene a being as himself ?
He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of
the square, where, being a lad of a kind heart, he had
made himself a circle of acquaintances among its shy
frequenters, the half-domestic cats and the visitors that
hung before the windows of the Children's Hospital.
There he walked, considering the depth of his demerit
and the height of the adored ones super-excellence ; now
lighting upon earth to say a pleasant Avord to the
brother of some infant invalid ; now, with a great heave
of breath, remembering the queen of women, and the
sunshine of his life.
What was he to do ? Teresa, he had observed, was
in the habit of leaving the house towards afternoon : she
might perchance, run danger from some Cuban emissary,
v,hen the presence of a friend might turn the balance in
her favour : how, then, if he should follow her ? To
offer his company would seem like an intrusion ; to dog
her openly were a manifest impertinence ; he saw him-
self reduced to a more stealthy part, which, though in
some ways distasteful to his mind, he did not doubt that
he could practise with the skill of a detective.
The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action.