feel and has forgotten--weighed
upon him like a physical burden. And because he was young and not
without a certain pride in the intensity of his suffering, he increased
his misery by doggedly refusing to trace it back to its natural origin
in an empty stomach.

But the laws that govern the variable mind of man are as inscrutable as
the secret of light. Turning into a cross street, he came upon the tower
of Saint James' Church, and he grew suddenly cheerful. The quickening of
his pulses changed the aspect of the town as completely as if an
invigorating shower had fallen upon it. The supreme, haunting interest
of life revived.

He had meant merely to pass the rectory without stopping; but as he
turned into the slanting street at the foot of the twelve stone steps,
he saw a glimmer of white on the terrace, and the face of Virginia
looked down at him over the palings of the gate. Immediately it seemed
to him that he had known from the beginning that he should meet her. A
sense of recognition so piercingly sweet that it stirred his pulses like
wine was in his heart as he moved towards her. The whole universe
appeared to him to have been planned and perfected for this instant. The
languorous June evening, the fainting sweetness of flowers, the strange
lemon-coloured afterglow, and her face, shining there like a star in the
twilight--these had waited for him, he felt, since the beginning of
earth. That fatalistic reliance upon an outside Power, which assumed for
him the radiant guise of first love, and for Susan the stark certainties
of Presbyterianism, dominated him as completely as if he were the
predestined vehicle of its expression. Ardent, yet passive, Virginia
leaned above him on the dim terrace. So still she seemed that her breath
left her parted lips as softly as the perfume detached itself from the
opening rose-leaves. She made no gesture, she said no word--but suddenly
he became aware that her stillness was stronger to draw him than any
speech. All her woman's mystery was brooding there about her in the June
twilight; and in this strange strength of quietness Nature had placed,
for once, an invincible weapon in the weaker hands. Her appeal had
become a part of the terrible and beneficent powers of Life.

Crossing the street, he went up the steps to where she leaned on the
gate.

"It has been so long," he said, and the words seemed to him hideously
empty. "I have not seen you but three times since the party."