Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 58: what you’re looking at

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

48 funny how people meet, isn’t it? Just an accident—and there you are.” ‘All meetings are like that,” he said after a pause. ‘‘ People meet—they must meet some way—by the most trivial sort of chances, by the most ordinary sort of ac- cidents. Every formal introduction is an accident, isn’t it? The accident of your all being there at that time—” “Sometimes we’re there purposely, Mr. Pomeroy, aren’t we?” He had to smile at this. ‘““ Well, yes,” he admitted. ‘ As when we spend a couple of days hunting up the owner of a name in a Bible—but don’t for- get that the accident of our meeting came before that—in the bookstore.” He was silent for a moment or two aiter that, because both of them suddenly realized that there was much to be ex- plained; the thought of the bookstore brought that back. Her face had become sober again. ‘““T had made up my mind to be bright and happy for once, this evening,”’ she said. ‘“T was going to forget about—oh, about things, for a while—pretend I haven’t any- thing to worry about.” “ Acting, eh?” he commented. She nodded her head quickly. “ That’s just it—you know, I want to go on the stage. I have to, in fact—have to make a living some way. That’s why I’m holding on to all these expensive clothes when I could have sold them and—” “You know, Miss Pomeroy,” he said seriously, ‘“‘ you don’t have to tell me this unless you want to—unless it relieves your mind to have somebody to talk to. I’m not asking you, mind.” “Oh, I know—but I haven’t anybody to tell things to,” she said, a little troubled. ‘Perhaps, if I had a girl friend—” She was silent for a moment. ‘“ But even girl friends, you know, don’t always quite an- swer the purpose. There’s nothing in the world so satisfying to a woman as @ man friend—a real friend with whom she can talk out her troubles and to whom—” “T hope that you will be able to feel that I’m such a friend, Miss Pomeroy,” he broke in. ‘“That’s the singular part of it,” she ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, said, smiling. “I’ve felt that you were, from the moment I saw you at my apart- ment—even before you spoke a word.” He smiled back, much gratified. This was a discerning girl, he decided. She knew a regular fellow when she saw one. ‘I suppose I ought to begin at the be- ginning,” she said; and he nodded. “ Though we’re having a peep at the end right now—” “The way some women read a book, eh?” he commented. ‘““ Well, not all. Some don’t read—they live. The beginning,” she went on, “ is my father. Perhaps you know of him—he was a horseman. ‘That is, he bred horses and he raced them—going around the coun- try to wherever there was a meet. You can’t have a home—in the true sense of the word—when your only living relative is always off somewhere at the other end of the country; so we lived, when we weren’t ‘separated, in a small apartment hotel here in the city. We had a place in Virginia, ico, near Hampton; but the buildings are about ready te cave in, and nobody has lived there for twenty years—not since my mother died there. The house itself has been locked up, although we stayed a few times at one of the cottages there, on ac- count of father’s stable being there. ““T spent all my girlhood and most of my young womanhood in boarding and fin- ishing schools, and I only came home for good a few months before my father’s death last year, and I went to Europe soon after. I never was very intimate with my father— in fact, I don’t think I saw enough of him to become intimate with him. But he was a peculiar sort—much different from most people. He came into a large fortune when he attained his majority—in Virginia. He turned it all into cash, preparatory to mak- ing an investment, and placed it ail in the bank. “The details of the investment took two or three months to complete. In the mean- time the bank failed. Creditors received about two cents on the dollar—it complete- ly wiped out my father’s fortune, Well, he made two or three more before he was through; but, as I told you, he has never ; 3A COMME DOO eS) (©)