city
had suddenly become as strange and vast and empty as if he were a
traveller from distant lands. For a moment he stood on the door-step
hesitating; then he decided to go to the Parker House. What if the
messenger had been misinformed, and she were still there?

He started to walk across the Common; and on the first bench, under a
tree, he saw her sitting. She had a grey silk sunshade over her
head--how could he ever have imagined her with a pink one? As he
approached he was struck by her listless attitude: she sat there as if
she had nothing else to do. He saw her drooping profile, and the knot
of hair fastened low in the neck under her dark hat, and the long
wrinkled glove on the hand that held the sunshade. He came a step or
two nearer, and she turned and looked at him.

"Oh"--she said; and for the first time he noticed a startled look on
her face; but in another moment it gave way to a slow smile of wonder
and contentment.

"Oh"--she murmured again, on a different note, as he stood looking down
at her; and without rising she made a place for him on the bench.

"I'm here on business--just got here," Archer explained; and, without
knowing why, he suddenly began to feign astonishment at seeing her.
"But what on earth are you doing in this wilderness?" He had really no
idea what he was saying: he felt as if he were shouting at her across
endless distances, and she might vanish again before he could overtake
her.

"I? Oh, I'm here on business too," she answered, turning her head
toward him so that they were face to face. The words hardly reached
him: he was aware only of her voice, and of the startling fact that not
an echo of it had remained in his memory. He had not even remembered
that it was low-pitched, with a faint roughness on the consonants.

"You do your hair differently," he said, his heart beating as if he had
uttered something irrevocable.

"Differently? No--it's only that I do it as best I can when I'm
without Nastasia."

"Nastasia; but isn't she with you?"

"No; I'm alone. For two days it was not worth while to bring her."

"You're alone--at the Parker House?"

She looked at him with a flash of her old malice. "Does it strike you
as dangerous?"

"No; not dangerous--"

"But unconventional? I see; I suppose it is." She considered a
moment. "I hadn't thought of it, because I've just done something so
much more unconventional." The faint tinge of irony lingered in her
eyes.