This is the story of a wooing that went astray.
There are many such stories floating around, and they are all good, if they could only be told. But there is the trouble, for, like family skeletons, they are sunk so deep in the cellar or locked up so securely in the closet that there is no getting to them, even for a minute.
How these two met or where they met is of no material difference, and here is where a romantic touch might be introduced. The truth is that they came face to face with each other on the boardwalk at Atlantic City. He had been up to old Vienna while she had taken in the show on the Pier. A dozen or more of those high steins of Pilsner had made him a bit reckless, and that was his only excuse. She was lonely, and that was hers. It’s a great combination, like guncotton and a match. All right apart, but let them meet and the result is pyrotechnical. When they were twenty feet apart there was a sudden flash of lightning of the vivid brand they have on the Jersey shore, followed by a crash of thunder heavy enough to make a cigar store Indian step down and crawl under his pedestal. Then a few drops of rain about the size of a quarter, and a general scurrying for shelter.
The man whistled for a covered rolling chair, and the girl with eyes shut and head down ran directly into his arms.
 
Atlantic City is the place for sporty girls who play the game to the limit
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She recoiled like a rubber ball that has been thrown up against a brick wall, while he felt to see if his watch was still fast in the mooring at his vest.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” and she gathered up her skirts as she prepared for another flight.
“Don’t mention it,” he answered with admiration, “but I think you could beat Jeffries if you were trained down a bit.”
“Sir!”
“Now don’t sir me; it’s raining and that blanket of yours won’t stand water. I’ve an option on the only chair in sight. It’s yours; help yourself, and if you don’t mind I’ll go as far as my hotel. Are you on the job?”
“I don’t think——” she began severely, when the lightning broke out again and interrupted her.
“You don’t have to think,” he said. “Jump in and keep out of the wet. People don’t think at Atlantic City; they get on the job quick,” and he motioned the walking delegate with the perambulator to move up.
“All right,” she said, resignedly.
“Of course it’s all right, for you get home dry while I have a chance to meet a good fellow. Now let’s introduce. My name is Ben. There’s another part to it, but it don’t make any difference here. What’s yours?”
“You don’t lose any time, do you?”
“Never was known to so far. Come on, what is it?”
“Bess,” she answered.
“Bess; great; sounds like a sport. Not hard to say and rhymes with ‘bless’ and ‘yes’ and a lot of other words. Now, Bess, you and I are going to have one little drink just to celebrate. You know the old saying—wet out and wet in. The wise gink who’s pushing
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 this van is heading me back to where I came from, I see; Old Vienna. I wonder if he gets a commission? Just because I like you, and because your hair matches my tie I’ll blow you to anything you like from a second-story stein up to a bottle—large or small, according to your capacity. How about it?”
“I suppose you think because you got me in this absurd wicker basket before I could call a policeman and have you arrested for insulting me that any proposition you make from now on will not be objected to. Perhaps, because I made the fatal mistake of being alone on the walk at night, you, too, have made a mistake.”
“I never make mistakes, but this time I overlooked the fact that I am hungry. So we’ll get the large bottle and something to eat on the side and between drinks we’ll tell each other the story of our past lives, and we’ll make a bet on whose is the best.”
Half an hour later they were like a couple of chums who had known each other for years, and she was calling him Ben as if she had been raised with him.
That was not quite a year ago, and it is only introduced in order that the story might be told from the very beginning.
A thousand trifling things happen in life which often turn the tide or change the course of events. A man, because his watch is a few minutes late, misses a train which is wrecked and thus saves his life; again he goes down one street instead of another, for no reason that he knows of, and avoids a catastrophe or misses an opportunity; he goes here instead of there and something occurs which changes the course of his path from that point on to the grave. Call it fate if you like,
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 but whatever it is it is inevitable and inexorable, and no human will has been found that is strong enough to resist it. It is like the call of “Hands up” coming from the desperado with a revolver. There is no alternative. In some cases it is impulse, a seventh sense, or pure luck—good or bad—according to results, or even intuition. The wise man says that what is to be will be and trails along in contentment. Others fight it out and come forth beaten in the end.
The two of this story came back to New York hopelessly in love with each other, and at that time, so far as I know, it wasn’t the commercial love of the twentieth century, ready to switch and change as soon as the sun went under the first cloud. They met two, three and four times a week, first in one place and then in another, and they knocked about town like a pair of happy-go-lucky Bohemians with the rent paid a year in advance.
“Some day,” he said to her once, “when I am quite free to do as I like I’m going to marry you, and then all of this running to cover like a pair of rabbits chased by a brown ferret that you can’t see will stop.”
“How do you know that I would marry you even if you wanted it?” she asked.
“We’ll argue that point when the time comes,” was the answer.
“Now that we’ve known each other for so long a time—at least it seems long to me—I’ve a confession to make to you. I ought to have told you before, but it isn’t too late now.”
“Save your confession as I’m saving mine,” he said. “I never knew these past life stories to do any good, for both men and women make mistakes, and they
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 ought to do with them as the doctors do with their failures—bury them.”
“But we are doing wrong now.”
“The boy up the farmer’s tree filling his pocket with apples is happy until he is caught. My motto is to get as many apples as you can until you hear the farmer coming and then beat it while you have the wind with you. It doesn’t require as much nerve as you think, and any time the game isn’t worth it quit. The beaten man in a fight, if he is game, always gets as much applause as the victor and sometimes a great deal more. I have seen the time w............