Amazing Stories — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

little angry, The next day she did not come, and the next also. He was afraid. To hide his tear from himself, he set to work to write sonnets for her when she should come again . . For three days “he fought against his dread by such distraction, and then ‘the truth was before him clear and cold, and would not be denied. She might be ill, she might be dead; but he would not believe that he had been betrayed. There followed a week of misery. And then he knew she was the only thing on earth worth having, and that he must seek her, however hopeless the search, until she was found once more. He had some small private means of his own, and so he threw over his appointment on the flying stage, and set himself to find this girl, who had become at last all the world to him. He did not know where she lived, and little of her circumstances; for it had been part of the delight of her girlish romance that he should know nothing of her, “nothing of the dif- ference of their station. The ways of the city opened before him east and west, north and south. Even in Victorian days London was a maze, that little London with its poor four millions of people; but the London ,he explored, the London of the twenty- second century, was a London of thirty million souls. At first he was energetic and headlong, taking time neither to eat nor sleep. He sought for weeks and months, he went through every imaginable phase of fatigue. and despair, over-excitement and anger. Long after hope was dead, by the sheer inertia of his desire, he still went to and fro, peering into faces” and looking this way and that, in ‘the incessant ways. and lilts and passages of that interminable hive of men. At last chance was kind to him, and he saw her. It was in a time of festivity. He was hungry ; he had paid the inclusive fee and had gone into one of the gigantic dining-places of the city ; he was pushing his way among the tables and scrutinising by mere force of habit every group he passed. He stood still, robbed of all power of motion, his eyes wide, his lips apart. Elizabeth sat scarcely twenty yards away from him, looking straight at him, Her eyes were as hard to him, as hard and expressionless and void of recognition, as the eyes of a statue. She looked at him for a moment, and then her gaze passed beyond him, Had he had only her eyes to judge by he might have doubted if it were indeed Elizabeth, but he knew her by the gesture of her hand, by the grace of a wanton little curl that floated over her ear as she moved her head. Something was said to her, and she turned smiling tolerantly” to the man beside her, a little man in foolish raiment knobbed and spiked like some odd reptile with pneumatic horns—the Bindon of her father’s choice. For a moment Denton stood white and wild-eyed; _ then came a terrible faintness, and he sat before one | of the little tables. He sat down with his back to other people were standing up to go. The others — es _ her, and for a time he did not dare to look at her = again. When at last he did, she and Bindon and two _ were her father and her chaperone. eae He sat as if incapable of action until the four streets of moving platforms that intersected the city. Bindon and Mwres had disappeared. : He could not control himself to patience. He | felt he must speak to her forthwith, or die. He pushed forward to where they were seated, and sat down beside them. His white face was convulsed — Sr with half-hysterical excitement. — He laid his hand on her wrist. “Elizabeth?” fies xe said. <a She turned in unfeigned astonishment. Nothing but the fear of a strange man showed in her face. “Elizabeth, 2 he cried, and his voice was strange to him: “dearest—you know me?” ' Elizabeth’s face showed nothing but alarm and Some aie She drew herself away from him. The chaperone, a little grey-headed woman with mobile features, leant forward to intervene. Her resolute bright eyes examined Denton. “What do you say?” ~ she asked. — “This young lady,” said Denton—‘‘she knows me.’ “Do you know him, dear?” 2 “No,” said Elizabeth in a strange voice, and wie a hand to her forehead, speaking almost as one who repeats a lesson. “No, I do not know him. al kno —I do not know him.” “But—but. . . . Not know me! It is [Dewan Denton! To whom you used to talk. Don't you re member the flying stages ; 2? The little seat in the opel air? The verses—” ; _ “No,” cried Elizabeth,—‘“no. I do not know hi I do not know him. There is something... . don’t know. All I know is that I do not know Her face was a face of infinite distress. = The sharp eyes of the chaperone flitted to and fro from the girl to the man. “You see 2” she sai with the faint shadow of a smile. “She does | no know you.’ re “T do not know you,” said Elizabeth. “Of Tee . am sure.’ ; “But, dear—the songs—the Jittle verses—”’ 5 “She does not know you,” said the chaperone. “You must not. You have made a mistake. You must not go on talking to us after that. You must not annoy us on the public ways,” “But—” said Denton, and for a moment his miser- ably haggard face appealed against fate. 2 “You must not persist, young man,” protested : the chaperone. “Elizabeth!” he cried. Her face was the face of one who is tormented. “I do not know you,” she cried, hand to brow. “Oh, I do not know you!” = For an instant Denton sat stunned. Then he stood up and groaned aloud. = He madea strange gesture of appeal towards the — remote glass roof of the public way, then turned. went plunging recklessly from one moving platfo to another’ and vanished amidst the - swarms of ple going to and fro thereon. The chaperone’ “followed him, and then she looked at. ‘the faces about her, oe - “Dear,” asked. Bitzabeun: senuanic tt _ too ot moved to he ed observation, “