"I have the awful feeling that any attempts to dazzle that girl would be the greatest magic feat of all" he thought. She would resist him and take a sadistic pleasure in keeping him at a distance.
"It's never enough. No magic trick will do anything more than telegraph to her the hopelessness of my desperation. I wonder if she ever shows her cousin any friendliness on the nights of his birthday parties. Well this is a well paid appearance that I cannot afford to jeopardise with bad public relations; and that is exactly what any other attempt to approach Miss Van Horner would do. Why am I hoping for any change of fortune on Saturday night? After all if she wore a hat at all, her lips would inevitably tell me that she doesn't like rabbits. There's never a wonderful audience when you need it, except the children. The worst of it is that I cannot enjoy the children's positive responses the way I usually do, with their host's older adult cousin snubbing me brazenly. What would I do for a second chance at magic matching?" he thought.
He had his second chance in the middle of town on Wednesday, when he was performing in the open air theatre sponsored by the local council. She was eating from a plastic container with a disposable spoon, sitting on a bench facing the stage.
This time she wore a cream coat with matching dress, and her hair had been cut slightly shorter since the encounter on Monday. He walked around the audience talking trivially as he finished a feat of deception with an apparently shrinking wand.
"It's the trouble with trying to make people believe in the power of magic during lunch hours" he said "I seldom have the time or opportunity for providing myself with food for thought, and what's worse: I don't seem to be able to find my red handkerchief. Could I borrow a spare tissue from you Madam?"
He had made this request of Miss Van Horner.
"I would want to know if I'd have it back at the conclusion of your show without any knots in it or other damage. I'm not that keen on the way you illusionists amuse people by embarrassing members of your own audiences."
"You will have it back exactly as you lend it to me. What colour is it by the way?" asked Robert.
"White" she said reaching into her pocket to remove a red handkerchief, "... What? Not only are you an exhibitionist. You seek to make me appear a liar and a simple fool for your deception."
"Open it up if you like" said Robert hearing the amused murmur of the crowd.
"Oh alright!"
She violently separated the fold of the handkerchief to discover and reveal that it bore his initials RS in maroon old fashioned lettering.
"Well I had better let you keep it anyway."
"I don't see why! It certainly isn't mine!" she exclaimed indignantly.
"But I'll never be able to prove that it's mine, since you found it in your pocket."
"I know what you're trying to prove, but I will have no more of it!"