dull companion. Her escort for the evening
was a man of unusual conversational powers; but she seemed to be almost
oblivious of his presence; and when, through some passing courteous
impulse, she did turn her ear his way, it was with just that tinge of
preoccupation which betrays the divided mind.

Were her thoughts with some secret problem yet unsolved? It would
scarcely seem so from the gay remark with which she had left home. She
was speaking to her brother and her words were: "I am going out to enjoy
myself. I've not a care in the world. The slate is quite clean." Yet she
had never seemed more out of tune with her surroundings nor shown a mood
further removed from trivial entertainment. What had happened to becloud
her gaiety in the short time which had since elapsed?

We can answer in a sentence.

She had seen, among a group of young men in a distant doorway, one with
a face so individual and of an expression so extraordinary that all
interest in the people about her had stopped as a clock stops when the
pendulum is held back. She could see nothing else, think of nothing
else. Not that it was so very handsome--though no other had ever
approached it in its power over her imagination--but because of its
expression of haunting melancholy,--a melancholy so settled and so
evidently the result of long-continued sorrow that her interest had been
reached and her heartstrings shaken as never before in her whole life.

She would never be the same Violet again.

Yet moved as she undoubtedly was, she was not conscious of the least
desire to know who the young man was, or even to be made acquainted with
his story. She simply wanted to dream her dream undisturbed.

It was therefore with a sense of unwelcome shock that, in the course of
the reception following the programme, she perceived this fine young man
approaching herself, with his right hand touching his left shoulder in
the peculiar way which committed her to an interview with or without a
formal introduction.

Should she fly the ordeal? Be blind and deaf to whatever was significant
in his action, and go her way before he reached her; thus keeping her
dream intact? Impossible. His eye prevented that. His glance had caught
hers and she felt forced to await his advance and give him her first
spare moment.

It came soon, and when it came she greeted him with a smile. It was the
first she had ever bestowed in welcome of a confidence of whose tenor
she was entirely ig