The lines were running and jumping before his eyes, and Neil read the note several times before he understood what was it.
Candice White was going to visit him now to sign the bill for the Pony House. William Albert Andry was out of the town, so was Neil's father, and Neil managed all the bills in the absence of the Andrys' family head. Mister Legan had just started to engage his son into the family business and Neil had recently received signature authority. According to the note it was a matter of urgency, and he was to meet Candy and sign this bill.
"That will take me a moment" – the young man thought hectically feeling how he was getting hot, his tie choking him.
After that unfortunate engagement Neil avoided meeting his merciless sweetheart, however, this ignoring was mutual. He had not seen Candy at all since that very day, and that was why today's meeting, such unexpected one, started to confuse him.
«To greet her, to ask her to sit down. To sign this bloody bill. That will take me a moment...» – the young man persuaded himself when somebody knocked on the door.
"Come in!" He cried and stared at the papers before him not to look at the one coming in.
"Hello!" Her clear voice sounded, and the young Legan sweared silently, he hesitated and was late to greet her first.
"Hello," the young man answered in a suddenly hoarse voice not looking up at her. "Take a sit."
Candy was approaching him, and he felt worse and worse. Neil loosened his tie feeling his hands shaking. Damn it!
"Here," the girl uttered thrusting some paper under his nose.
He dipped his pen into inkpot and raised his hand over the papers. Candy sat within arm's reach, and her presence drove Neil crazy. He felt her scent – the scent of freshness and spring, that special scent of his sweetheart, out of the corner of his eye's he saw her tiding her rebel hair, and it all drove him crazy.
When the young man understood that he could see nothing on the paper that miss White gave him, an inkblot fell from the pen point and spread over the white paper.
"Damn it! Where do I sign?" He finally had to look up at her.
"Here."
Finally he signed where her finger pointed and he held out the papers back to the girl.
"Thank you."
He kept silence looking her going away from his table. Farther and farther…
"Good bye!"
Legan kept silent again. She closed the door. And then he suddenly realized that everything was ended. Nothing would happen. Neil told himself he would never give in, one day she would fell in love with him, he would find favor in her eyes. After that indignity with the engagement the young man still developed thousands of plans how they would be together. Dozens of solutions, hundreds of talks with himself, different situations that would happen in the future, he was not about to give in. He took her refusal to engage as a temporal retreat, but the moment when the door closed behind her the reality of everything what happened suddenly came down over him like a ton of bricks. No matter how blind you are when you are in love, once you understand everything. And Neil understood what everybody else around him knew perfectly – Candy did not love him. There was not a smallest assumption that anything would change.
That understanding came to him all of a sudden, and Neil marveled that everything around was so habitual and joyful when his hopes and dreams were crushed. It was a warm spring day, and through the opened window he could hear birds babbling and passers-by talking, sunbeams penetrated the study like golden threads, motes were dancing in this light. Something inside him was twisting with pain and dying in agony.
Not being able to stand this mismatch, he swept all papers and other writing materials off the table. The inkpot and a cup of tea mindfully arranged by the secretary fell heavily, broke and sloshed the parquet floor with black liquids. He felt a little better.
A bronze figure of a girl holding a jar remained standing on the table. Neil took it and feeling its' weight smashed it to the cabinet with glass doors standing at the left wall.
An outstanding clink sounded, and Neil rushed of his chair and ran to the drawer unit with a vase with flowers standing on it. Elisa often broke things when she was in bad mood, but her brother was always more reserved. Neil could cast a cloth, or something else, but he had never smashed a room so devotedly.
Neil dropped the vase, trampled the flowers and tossed the coffee table.
"Neil!"
Candy rushed into the study, perhaps she was not far away at the moment when he lost temper.
Hearing her voice Neil sulked at once and stepping back fell into the chair.
"Neil!" The girl cried indignantly and fearfully, and the young man shrugged his shoulders.
"I had a bad day," he said, bursting out laughing like crazy. Laughter always helped him to hide his true feelings when Candy was close to him. "All disgusting," he repeated laughing louder when in terror he realized that he was crying. He buried his face in his hands trying to keep self-control.
"Neil..." her voice became softer.
With all his being he felt her going closer. Then he felt her tender warm hand on his shoulder.