And once, when the traffic was suddenly arrested, he was close enough to be wildly tempted to bend down and snatch off that irritating hat. He would have learned at least the color of her hair, and probably she would have lifted her startled face to view like a reverted rose. He was a fearless soldier, but he was not so daring as all that. Still, he heard her voice as she gossiped to a momentary neighbor who raised his hat in a touring-car held up abeam her own.
Her voice did not especially please him; it was almost shrill, and it had the metallic glitter of the New York voice. Her words, too, were a trifle hard, and as unpoetic as possible.
"We had a rotten time," she said. "I was bored stiff. You ought to have been there."
And then she laughed a little at the malice implied. The policeman's whistle blew and the cars lurched forward. And the stage lumbered after them like a green hippopotamus. Forbes began to feel a gnawing anxiety to see what was under that paradise feather. He assumed that beauty was there, though he had learned from shocking experiences how dangerous it is to hope a woman beautiful because the back of her head is of good omen.
It became a matter of desperate necessity to overtake that will-o'-the-wisp chauffeur and observe his passenger. Great expectations seemed to be justified by the fact that nearly every policeman saluted her and smiled so pleasantly and so pleasedly that the smile lingered after she was far past.
Forbes noted, too, that the people she bowed to in other cars or on the sidewalk seemed to be important people, and yet to be proud when her hat gave a little wren-like nod in their directions.
At Fifty-first Street, in front of the affable gray Cathedral, there was a long and democratic delay while a contemptuous teamster, perched atop a huge steel girder, drove six haughty stallions across the Avenue; drove them slowly, and puffed deliberate smoke in the face of the impatient aristocracy.
Here a dismounted mounted policeman paced up and down, followed by a demure horse with kindly eyes. This officer paused to pass the time of day with the mysterious woman, and the horse put his nose into the car and accepted a caress from her little gloved hand. Again Forbes heard her voice: