Appointment with love. Six minutes to six,. Gajd the great round clock over the information booth in grand Central station

by S.I. Kishor

Six minutes to six,.gajd the great round clock over the information booth in Grand Central Station. The tall young army lieutenant¹ who had just come from the direction of the tracks lifted his sunburned face, and his eyes nar­rowed to note the exact time. His heart was pounding with a beat that shocked him because he could not control it. Tn six minutes he would see the woman who had filled such a special place in his life for the past thirteen months, the woman he had never seen, yet whose written words had been with him and sustained him unfailingly.

He placed himself as close as he could to the information booth, just beyond the ring of people besieging the clerks.

Lieutenant Blandford remembered one night in particular, the worst of the fighting, when his plane had been caught in the midst of a pack of Zeros². He had seen the grinning face of one of the enemy pilots.

In one of his letters he had confessed to her that he often felt fear, and only a few days before this battle, he had received her answer. " Of course you fear... all brave men do. Didn't King David know fear? That's why he wrote the Twenty-third Psalm. Next time you doubt yourself, I want you to hear my voice reciting to you: " Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art³ with me..." And he had remembered, he had heard her imagined voice, and it had renewed his strength and skill.

Now he was going to hear her real voice. Four minutes to six. His face grew sharp.

Under the immense, starred roof, people were walking fast, like threads of color being woven into a gray web. A girl passed close to him and Lieu­tenant Blandford started. She was wearing a red flower in her suit lapel, but it was a crimson sweet pea, not the little red rose they had agreed upon. Besides, this girl was too young about eighteen, whereas Hollis Meynell had frankly told him she was thirty. " Well, what of it? " he had answered. " I'm thirty-two." He was twenty-nine.

His mind went back to that book — the book the Lord Himself must have put into his hands out of the hundreds of army library books sent to the Florida training camp, Of Human Bondage, it was; and throughout the book

APPOINTMENT WITH LOVE

were notes in a woman's writing. He had always hated that writing-in habit, but these remarks were different. He had never believed that a woman could see into a man's heart so tenderly, so understandingiy. Her name was on the bookplate: Hollis Meynel! ⁴. He had got hold of a New York City Tele­phone book and found her address. He had written, she had answered. Next day he had been shipped out but they had gone on writing.

For thirteen months, she had faithfully replied, and more than replied. When his letters did not arrive, she wrote anyway, and now he believed he loved her, and she loved him.

i_But she had refused all his pleas to send him her photograph. That seemed rather bad, of course. But she had explained: " If your feeling for me has any reality, any honest basis, what I look like won't matter. Suppose I'm beautiful. I'd always be haunted by the feeling that you had been taking a chance on just that, and that kind of love would disgust me. Suppose I'm plain (and you must admit that this is more likely). Then I'd always fear that you were going on writing to me only because you were lonely and had no one else. No, don't ask for my picture. When you come to New York, you shall see me and then you shall make your decision. Remember, both of us are free to stop or to go on after that — whichever we choose..."

The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.

One minute to six...

Then Lieutenant Blandford's heart leaped higher than his plane had ever done.

A young woman was coming toward him. Her figure was long and slim; her blond hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears. Her eyes were blue as flowers; her lips and chin had a gentle firmness. In her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive.

He started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was wearing no rose, and as he moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips.

" Going my way, soldier? " she murmured.

Uncontrollably, he made one step closer to her. Then he saw Hollis Meynell.

She was standing almost directly behind the girl, a woman well past forty, her graying hair tucked under a worn hat. She was more than plump; her thick-ankled feet were thrust into low-heeled shoes. But she wore a red rose in the rumpled lapel of her brown coat.