use in the way of tipping--and instead of putting her
bag down on the station platform, he held it in his hand waiting to do
her further service. At the head of the steps she searched about for
Hale and her lovely face looked vexed and a little hurt when she did not
see him.

"Hotel, Miss?" said the porter.

"Yes, please, Harvey!" she called.

An astonished darky sprang from the line of calling hotel-porters and
took her bag. Then every tooth in his head flashed.

"Lordy, Miss June--I never knowed you at all."

June smiled--it was the tribute she was looking for.

"Have you seen Mr. Hale?"

"No'm. Mr. Hale ain't been here for mos' six months. I reckon he aint in
this country now. I aint heard nothin' 'bout him for a long time."

June knew better than that--but she said nothing. She would rather have
had even Harvey think that he was away. So she hurried to the hotel--she
would have four hours to wait--and asked for the one room that had a
bath attached--the room to which Hale had sent her when she had passed
through on her way to New York. She almost winced when she looked in the
mirror and saw the smoke stains about her pretty throat and ears, and
she wondered if anybody could have noticed them on her way from the
train. Her hands, too, were dreadful to look at and she hurried to take
off her things.

In an hour she emerged freshened, immaculate from her crown of lovely
hair to her smartly booted feet, and at once she went downstairs. She
heard the man, whom she passed, stop at the head of them and turn to
look down at her, and she saw necks craned within the hotel office when
she passed the door. On the street not a man and hardly a woman
failed to look at her with wonder and open admiration, for she was an
apparition in that little town and it all pleased her so much that she
became flushed and conscious and felt like a queen who, unknown, moved
among her subjects and blessed them just with her gracious presence.
For she was unknown even by several people whom she knew and that, too,
pleased her--to have bloomed so quite beyond their ken. She was like a
meteor coming back to dazzle the very world from which it had flown for
a while into space. When she went into the dining-room for the midday
dinner, there was a movement in almost every part of the room as though
there were many there who were on the lookout for her entrance. The head
waiter, a portly darky, lost his imperturbable majesty for a moment in
s