with nestling warmth and restful
shade--after this interval, looking back at the past, I dare ask the
question--who knows but that I too might have drifted from the secure
anchorage of my slow Yankee blood and floated into the deep waters?

Beauty, the cynic's scoff, is in the eye of the beholder, or in an angle
of vision--mere product of lime-light, point of view, desire--but Beulah
Sands's was beauty beyond cavil, superior to all analysis, as definite as
the evening star against the twilight sky. In height medium, girlish, but
with a figure maturely modelled, charmingly full and rounded, yet by very
perfection of proportion escaping suggestion of "plumpness." The head,
surrounded and crowned with a wealth of dark golden hair, rested on a neck
that would have seemed short had its slender column sprung less graciously
from the lovely lines of the breast and shoulders beneath. It was on the
face, however, and finally on the eyes that one's glances inevitably
lingered--the face rose-tinted, with dimples in either of the full cheeks,
entering laughing protest against the sad droop that brought slightly down
the corners of a mouth too large perhaps for beauty, if the coral curve of
the lips had been less exquisitely perfect. The straight, thin-nostriled
nose, the broad forehead, the square, full jaw almost as low at the points
where they come beneath the ears as at the chin, suggested dignity and
high resolve coupled with a power of purpose, rare in woman. The
combination of forehead, jaw, and nose was seldom seen. Had it been
possessed by a man it would surely have driven him to the tented field for
his profession. But the greatest glory of Beulah Sands was her
eyes--large, full, very gray, very blue, vivid with all the glamour of her
personality, full of smiles and tears and spirituality and passion; one
instant, frankly innocent, they illuminated the face of a blonde Madonna;
the next, seen through the extraordinary, long, jet-black eye-lashes
underneath the finely pencilled black brows, they caressed, coquetted,
allured. I afterward found much of this girl's purely physical fascination
lay in this strange blending of English fairness with Andalusian tints,
though the abiding quality of her charm was surely in an exaltation of
spirit of which she might make the dullest conscious. As she stood looking
at Bob in my office that long-ago noon, gracefully at ease in a suit of
gray, with a gray-feathered turban on her head, and