R

OMANCE! I began looking for it when I was very young, as most people do, and found plenty of it in fairy tales. Later, and again like other people, I began to hope to find it in reality. I was recommended to Italy.

Know'st thou the land

Where blooms the lemon tree?

I was advised as to Venice, Maggiore, Lugano, and, if I would but go so far, dawn upon the Matterhorn.

Romance is to be found in these places, of course, but not the romance I allude to. I remember, on a ship returning from Italy, a stout little man from Kalamazoo who sat on the edge of his steamer chair and declared:

"Venice? Oh yes, it's romantic, all right, if that's what you're looking for. But if you'd been eaten up alive in a gondola by mosquitoes the size of chicken hawks, and then got back to the Danieli and crawled under a smothering mosquito netting, and then had your hard-earned sleep, by George! smashed twenty-five times through the night by those good-for-nothing caroling gondoliers bursting into song, you'd say, 'Give me little old Kalamazoo and a few Godfearing public - nuisance ordinances.' That's the sort of thing that poets and artists call romance, and you say we haven't got it. I'll bet we haven't! I'll bet if we had, the city fathers would get up in their nightcaps and throw furniture at it!"

Everybody laughed. The little man from Kalamazoo was a find. He had snatched the robe of the wonderful suddenly from Venice and wrapped it about himself. He was inimitable. I have never forgotten him. But his listeners,

Rolike myself, were unpersuaded. mance remained somewhere to be discovered.

I do not know where or whether the others ever came upon it, but I found it that very year, in Christmas week, when I chanced upon that delightfully handsome and romantic young couple whom I first saw in the tailor shop. It happened to be a practical time with me, and, instead of planning to select beautiful and suitable Christmas gifts among bewildering displays at fascinating Christmas shops, I had been obliged to spend my money-sordidly enough, it seemedfinancing a new suit for myself, my old one having suddenly, like the Deacon's One-hoss Shay, given out in all its parts.

I went to a tailor shop in the next block. A slim young tailor's assistant, who looked as though he had never had an ounce too much to eat, came forward to answer my questions, and then made off to fetch a sample-book.

Meanwhile a thin old dame of, I should say, seventy years, was having a suit fitted by a short, rather stout man who was evidently the head tailor.

She was a parrotlike old creature. She wore a high headdress unsuitable to her years, of brilliant macaw's feathers. These seemed to have a subtle relation to her beaklike nose. Also she kept up a kind of quarrelsome, parrotlike comment on everything that the little tailor did or said.

Ah, well, fortunately for himself, he was a patient little man. He had even a placid, almost benevolent, look. No doubt he waited on a good many quarrelsome dames of the old parrot's ilk. He was partly bald, and, as by some watchful dispensation of Providence, he

had large, flat feet, very useful in the pursuance of a profession that requires much standing on them. His face was kindly, besides being patient; his outline reminded me of a penguin.

But it was the old dame whom I watched especially. She was raising one arm a bit and looking absorbedly and sharply in a hand mirror which she held close to nearsighted eyes, to see if a wrinkle of any sort could possibly be found, while the flat-footed, good-natured, but anxious, Penguin looked in the large mirror with real concern, hoping that it could not.

Presently, while the wrinkle was still being spitefully sought, there entered the shop a willowy, beautiful slip of a girl, only slightly over twenty, I think. She had an aristocratic grace combined with great charm of simplicity and freedom. She was dressed extremely plainly, as with an almost austere economy. She went over and greeted the old dame graciously as "Aunt," giving her "good morning." The latter did not, however, accord her at the time so much as a glance, being absorbedly bent still on the hunt for the wrinkle.

Evidently the girl had met her aunt there by agreement. She stood paying careful attention to the fitting for a moment or two; then she turned, and took her place on a waiting haircloth sofa, facing the inside glass door which opened into the shop from a little vestibule outside.

She was unusually beautiful, and I had the impression at once that, young though she was, she was married. There was that subtle poise and certainty and contentment about her that I have never yet seen in the young and unmarried, however assured or happy they may be. A moment later my judgment was confirmed. She drew off her walking gloves. There, sure enough, on her slender left hand shone a wedding ring.

Presently she looked up swiftly, as by some intuition, at the exact right moment to catch the smile of a wonderful young chap, slightly older than herself,

VOL. CXLIV.-No, 859.-14

who stood just outside in the vestibule with his hand on the door knob ready to enter. He, too, was neatly dressed, in tweed, but without anything that would give the least idea of luxury or wealth. I should have said, even, that they were poor but for a certain impression of immaterial riches which they evidently both had.

His face lighted up at sight of her, and hers at sight of him. He gave her a questioning nod toward what he must have supposed was the direction of "Aunt," which said, plainly: "How about it? Eh? Is it safe to come in?"

She glanced toward the old dame, who was still wholly absorbed in her fitting, then shook her head vigorously, and made a pretty little horizontal gesture with one lovely hand.

He was quick to understand this stenography. Interruption of the irascible old dame's fitting was not to be thought of. Moreover, I conjectured that the old dame did not approve of him. She was the type and cut of old she-dragon who would have had her niece marry an older man of sound finance. The young husband's intrusion at present, therefore, would have counted as something doubly unacceptable at this time of day, when older men approved by older women of the aunt's type are well ensconced in their counting-houses, counting o'er their money.

Yet he lingered, smiling,, as though he very much wanted to come in. Again the young wife glanced at the old dame, who was grimly absorbed now in pointing out to the patient Penguin that there was a wrinkle, or the shadow of a very slight possibility of one, a few inches down from the left armhole.

The wireless communication continued. The young wife shook her head, which, being interpreted, meant, "We must on no account disturb her now."

He lifted his eyebrows and nodded: "Very well, if you think so. But I adore you, my dearly beloved!"

"I know, my darling, but good-by," she smiled, and just brushed her finger

tips over her lips and outward-as lovely a salutation as ever I saw. He more boldly, and either ignoring or not seeing me, threw her a devoted kiss. I knew that he had accepted her verdict by the immediacy with which he put his head resolutely in the air, like a man making an unpleasant but necessary decision, and, lifting his hat an instant, walked away. I saw him go past the window. What a fine figure he was in his English tweeds and spats, and what a fine swinging walk he had, like one of the young lords of the earth!

So here, in a manner, was romance. Here was a pair of married lovers, if ever I saw one. Free of the whole world through their love, but bound, it seemed certain, by some material necessity; while the old she-dragon-the girl's aunt-was, it seemed certain, a holder of purse strings, a person of unpleasant and persistent power.

So I had the romance all well outlined when the tailor's assistant returned with samples. Meanwhile he urged me in an undertone, with an explanatory tiptoe glance at the old dame, either to be pleased to wait, or else to be pleased to come again when his master, the Penguin, was disengaged.

I looked at the Penguin. A model of fat, complacent, good-natured patience, he was picking pins out of his mouth, giving the utmost of attention, meanwhile, to the just possible possibility of a shadow of a shade of a wrinkle in the half-constructed coat of the svelt old she-dragon.

I promised to come at a freer season, and went out into the crisp air. A few days more and it would be Christmas. I decided to wait until after that holiday to go to the shop again, and walked away, haunted by the memory of those two charming presences-the beautiful, princesslike young woman in her plain serge suit, and the hardly less beautiful princely young man turning away resolutely from delight, at her bidding, he and his tweeds and his spats. Here, I felt sure, was a strain of clear romance, if I could have followed it.

That is, of course, one of the compensations of older years-one gains the ability, the spiritual ability, to read and interpret the human characters of face and form, yet these go by, go by, so swiftly, like a moving film, before the whole story can be read. I knew I should lose these two, and with them I should lose romance.

It can be imagined then, my delight, when the very next evening I was fortunate enough to have yet another glimpse of them. They were arm in arm, beautiful, young, devoted, mated perfectly, and they were peering absorbedly into the window of a fine antique shop in the neighborhood. This, too, was easy to read. They were furnishing, of course, with what they could not afford to buy, the ideal abode they were as yet unable to possess, being, at the same time, as I did not fail to note, clearly wealthier by far, in their lack, than many others infinitely richer in material possessions.

I lingered, myself, at the next window, keeping an eye on them unobserved. Presently they moved up the street to pause, the next time, as delighted as two children, before the fantastic display of a toy shop.

I had the impression of her constant dependence upon him, and of a certain buoyant strength that he had, and delighted in, on which it pleased her greatly to lean. My step followed theirs, my eye on them, as the eye follows a star; but already they had turned, and, walking away, were lost to me in the crowd.

she-dragon.

I apprehended that here between these two and their old aunt was romance, youth, age, and the eternal conflict of these! I should like to have known their names and that of the old she-dragon. Ah, the powerful person that she was! I recalled just how she stood, looking grimly for that wrinkle; how she held, without apparent effort, these two, and the little Penguin tailor, and the little Penguin tailor's assistant and myself, all in our places, like a solar anomaly. I even found myself wondering if the finished suit had pleased her.

I could have sworn it had not. I could have sworn, too, that in that case the young Princess was dragged somehow into the unpleasantness-not to speak, of course, of the little tailor himself, the patient little Penguin who no doubt had his own history, too.

But these two royal young people would survive-did, no doubt, daily survive the lives of loveless men and spiteful aunts, like stars of a high destiny.

It occurred to me once, when I was away from their presence, that perhaps I was reading into the world more than was there. Was my old wish for romance father to this thought of romance?

The next few days were very busy. I even gave over remembering my prince and princess, until Christmas Eve. Then it was that at about half past six o'clock I stepped into a drug store on Lexington Avenue to telephone in one of its four telephone booths. I dropped in my fivecent piece and waited. I received no answer. I moved the receiver hook up and down gently and waited. No reply. I was about to shake it impatiently, but stopped midway of the intention. From the telephone booth next me I could hear the voice of some one who was telephoning. It was a mellow, manly, ardent voice, and it said, as though in gentle, half-laughing deprecation: "Oh, my dearest beloved!"

and as a precious example, be overheard. So I listened unblushingly, the vision of my prince and princess floating through my mind.

It is amazing, too, and instructive how much can be gathered from only one end of a conversation, as though we used twice too many words generally in conveying our sentiments and intelligence. I now heard him say:

"Of course, my dear, it can't be helped. I know we must have your aunt Arabel to dinner. . . . Yes I know. I feel that way, too-but it doesn't matter. We can have our Christmas supper alone. . . . No, precious! . . . Precious! Yes! . . . No, darling! . . . No, my precious!"

So they stirred me quite as those young people in the tailor shop had stirred me; it might almost have been those two, talking together of the old she-dragon. And that arid name, "Aunt Arabel"! What could have been more suitable for one of that species? I could almost have been convinced it was she and that these two, speaking across space in the dark beside me, were the very Prince and Princess themselves, and that "Aunt Arabel" in perfect keeping was booked to spoil their Christmas for them.

"Good Lord!" (the Prince grew profane at the sound of some intelligence soundless to me). "Do you mean to say

bor was remarking, revealingly:

"I know, dear, but I don't think a ham seems very much like Christmas, that's all."

I stood in the dark of the little telephone booth, without again moving the receiver hook, and listened.

It was the quality of his voice, linked with that discussion with the wife, evidently, of his delight about a fitting Christmas dinner, which enthralled me. Moreover, telephone booths are public places, and a conversation between people who obviously adore each other really ought, at times, pro bono publico,

...

even going to take the suit, after all? Good Lord! And think of her sending it back at Christmas time, too! Isn't that like her?"

Now this fell on me suddenly, you see, like beneficence, for I knew now by this further sign and token that these were the very Prince and Princess themselves. It may seem at first a little thing, a chance happening like that, but think of it, and of the real romance of it! Had I not longed to enter their lives and know the hearts of these two whose lives touched mine not at all, and read their romance? And were not two hearts here