l, sweet figure set on high, wrapped
in virginal austerity, calm in her serene perfection, and his soul
abased itself before her. He knelt in an awed and worshipful adoration.

So before quest or tournament or battle must those elder Ste.
Maries--Ste. Maries de Mont-les-Roses---have knelt, each knight at the
feet of his lady, each knightly soul aglow with the chaste ardor of
chivalry.

The man's hands tightened upon the parapet of the bridge, he lifted his
face again to the shining stars where-among, as his fancy had it, she
sat enthroned. Exultingly he felt under his feet the rungs of the
ladder, and in the darkness he swore a great oath to have done forever
with blindness and grovelling, to climb and climb, forever to climb,
until at last he should stand where she was--cleansed and made worthy by
long endeavor--at last meet her eyes and touch her hand.

It was a fine and chivalric frenzy, and Ste. Marie was passionately in
earnest about it, but his guardian angel--indeed, Fate herself--must
have laughed a little in the dark, knowing what manner of man he was in
less exalted hours.

It was an odd freak of memory that at last recalled him to earth. Every
man knows that when a strong and, for the moment, unavailing effort has
been made to recall something lost to mind, the memory, in some
mysterious fashion, goes on working long after the attention has been
elsewhere diverted, and sometimes hours afterward, or even days,
produces quite suddenly and inappropriately the lost article. Ste. Marie
had turned, with a little sigh, to take up, once more, his walk across
the Pont des Invalides, when seemingly from nowhere, and certainly by no
conscious effort, a name flashed into his mind. He said it aloud:

"O'Hara! O'Hara! That tall, thin chap's name was O'Hara, by Jove! It
wasn't Powers at all!" He laughed a little as he remembered how very
positive Captain Stewart had been. And then he frowned, thinking that
the mistake was an odd one, since Stewart had evidently known a good
deal about this adventurer. Captain Stewart, though, Ste. Marie
reflected, was exactly the sort to be very sure he was right about
things. He had just the neat and precise and semi-scholarly personality
of the man who always knows. So Ste. Marie dismissed the matter with
another brief laugh, but a cognate matter was less easy to dismiss. The
name brought with it a face--a dark and splendid face with tragic eyes
that called. He walked a long way thin