s of the river. I had left the house, feeling the impulse
which drives us, in certain excited conditions of the mind, to take
refuge in movement and change. The remedy had failed; my mind was as
strangely disturbed as ever. My wisest course would be to go home, and
keep my good mother company over her favorite game of piquet.

I turned to take the road back, and stopped, struck by the tranquil
beauty of the last faint light in the western sky, shining behind the
black line formed by the parapet of the bridge.

In the grand gathering of the night shadows, in the deep stillness of
the dying day, I stood alone and watched the sinking light.

As I looked, there came a change over the scene. Suddenly and softly a
living figure glided into view on the bridge. It passed behind the black
line of the parapet, in the last long rays of the western light. It
crossed the bridge. It paused, and crossed back again half-way. Then it
stopped. The minutes passed, and there the figure stood, a motionless
black object, behind the black parapet of the bridge.

I advanced a little, moving near enough to obtain a closer view of the
dress in which the figure was attired. The dress showed me that the
solitary stranger was a woman.

She did not notice me in the shadow which the trees cast on the bank.
She stood with her arms folded in her cloak, looking down at the
darkening river.

Why was she waiting there at the close of evening alone?

As the question occurred to me, I saw her head move. She looked along
the bridge, first on one side of her, then on the other. Was she
waiting for some person who was to meet her? Or was she suspicious of
observation, and anxious to make sure that she was alone?

A sudden doubt of her purpose in seeking that solitary place, a sudden
distrust of the lonely bridge and the swift-flowing river, set my heart
beating quickly and roused me to instant action. I hurried up the
rising ground which led from the river-bank to the bridge, determined on
speaking to her while the opportunity was still mine.

She neither saw nor heard me until I was close to her. I approached with
an irrepressible feeling of agitation; not knowing how she might receive
me when I spoke to her. The moment she turned and faced me, my composure
came back. It was as if, expecting to see a stranger, I had unexpectedly
encountered a friend.

And yet she _was_ a stranger. I had never before looked on that grave
and noble face, on that gran