And I kissed her.
A boy was whistling on the pavement below. I let her go reluctantly and sat back where I could see her.
“I haven’t done this the way I intended to at all,” I confessed. “In books they get things all settled, and then kiss the lady.”
“Settled?” she inquired.
“Oh, about getting married and that sort of thing,” I explained with elaborate carelessness. “We—we could go down to Bermuda—or—or Jamaica, say in December.”
She drew her hand away and faced me squarely.
“I believe you are afraid!” she declared. “I refuse to marry you unless you propose properly. Everybody does it. And it is a woman’s privilege: she wants to have that to look back to.”
“Very well,” I consented with an exaggerated sigh. “If you will promise not to think I look like an idiot, I shall do it, knee and all.”
I had to pass her to close the door behind us, but when I kissed her again she protested that we were not really engaged.
I turned to look down at her. “It is a terrible thing,” I said exultantly, “to love a girl the way I love you, and to have only one arm!” Then I closed the door.
From across the street there came a sharp crescendo whistle, and a vaguely familiar figure separated itself from the park railing.
“Say,” he called, in a hoarse whisper, “shall I throw the key down the elevator shaft?”
Endnotes
-
“Am” crossed out and “was” substituted. —Ed. ↩
Colophon
The Man in Lower Ten
was published in 1909 by
Mary Roberts Rinehart.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Sergio Tellez,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1999 by
An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Sweethearts,
a painting completed in 1909 by
Howard Chandler Christy.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
July 3, 2025, 7:33 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/mary-roberts-rinehart/the-man-in-lower-ten.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
Uncopyright
May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
Copyright pages exist to tell you that you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission.
Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you’re not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States.
Non-authorship activities performed on items that are in the public domain—so-called “sweat of the brow” work—don’t create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.
