Love test

Peter Murrey stood up from the bench straightened his Navy uniform, and watched the crowd of people making their way through City Central Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, bur whose face he didn`t, the girl with the rose. His interest in her had begun thirteen months ago in a Florida library. Taking a book off the words of the book, but with the notes written by pencil in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind.

In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner`s name, Miss Catherine Cliff. He kept her address. She lived in introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. But the next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II.

During the next year and one-month the two grew to know each other through their letters. Each letter was a seed falling into a fertile mind. A romance was blooming. Peter requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn`t matter what she looked like.

When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they planned their first meeting – 10.00 a.m. at the City Central Station in San Francisco. She wrote him: “You will really recognize me by the red rose I will be holding in my hand. So at 10.00 a.m., Peter was at the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he had never seen.

And suddenly a young woman was coming toward him. Her figure was long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back in curls form her delicate ears and her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green outfit she was like springtime coming alive. Peter started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she had not got a rose in her hand. As he moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips. “Going to my way, sailor?” she murmured. Almost uncontrollably he made one step closer to her, and then he saw Catherine Cliff. She was standing almost directly behind the girl.

A woman well past forty, she had graying hair under a worn hat. She was almost fat, her thick-an-kled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes. The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away. Peter felt as though he was split in beauty, and yet so deep was his longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned him and supported his own.

And there she stood. Her pale, fat face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a friendly and kind shine. He did not hesitate. His fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify him to her. This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which he had been and must ever be grateful.

Peter saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while he spoke he felt overwhelmed by the bitterness of his disappointment. “I am Lieutenant Peter Murrey and you must be Miss Catherine Cliff. I am so glad you could meet me. May I take you to lunch?”

The woman`s face broadened into a tolerant smile. “ I don`t know what this is about, son,“ she answered, „but the young lady in the green suit who has just gone by, begged me to hold this rose in my hand. And she said if you were to ask me out to lundch, I should go and tell you that she was waiting for you in tghe big restaurant across this street. She said it was some king of test“.