d
far-ahead-visible as highways along which one has never to look twice to
see where he is travelling; one of those events that, looked at
retrospectively, are beyond all human understanding.

It was a beautiful July Saturday noon and Bob and I had just "packed up"
for the day preparatory to joining Mrs. Randolph on my yacht for a run
down to our place at Newport. As we stepped out of his office one of the
clerks announced that a lady had come in and had particularly asked to see
Mr. Brownley.

"Who the deuce can she be, coming in at this time on Saturday, just when
all alive men are in a rush to shake the heat and dirt of business for
food and the good air of all outdoors?" growled Bob. Then he said, "Show
her in."

Another minute and he had his answer.

A lady entered.

"Mr. Brownley?" She waited an instant to make sure he was the Virginian.

Bob bowed.

"I am Beulah Sands, of Sands Landing, Virginia. Your people know our
people, Mr. Brownley, probably well enough for you to place me."

"Of the Judge Lee Sands's?" asked Bob, as he held out his hand.

"I am Judge Lee Sands's oldest daughter," said the sweetest voice I had
ever heard, one of those mellow, rippling voices that start the
imagination on a chase for a mocking-bird, only to bring it up at the pool
beneath the brook-fall in quest of the harp of moss and watercresses that
sends a bubbling cadence into its eddies and swirls. Perhaps it was the
Southern accent that nibbled off the corners and edges of certain words
and languidly let others mist themselves together, that gave it its
luscious penetration--however that may be, it was the most
no-yesterday-no-tomorrow voice I had ever heard. Before I grew fully
conscious of the exquisite beauty of the girl, this voice of hers spelled
its way into my brain like the breath of some bewitching Oriental essence.
Nature, environment, the security of a perfect marriage have ever
combined to constitute me loyal to my chosen one, yet as I stood silent,
like one dumb, absorbing the details of the loveliness of this young
stranger who had so suddenly swept into my office, it came over me that
here was a woman intended to enlighten men who could not understand that
shaft which in all ages has without warning pierced men's hearts and
souls--love at first sight. Had there not been Katherine Blair, wife and
mother--Katherine Blair Randolph, who filled my love-world as the noonday
August sun fills the old-fashioned well