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re was a tap at the door, and, not waiting for a summons, a young girl entered, and stopped after a couple of steps. "Oh, I didn't know--" "What is it, dear?" said Mr. Mavick, looking up a moment, and then down at the papers. "Why, about the coachman's baby. I thought perhaps--" She had a paper in her hand, and advanced towards the table, and then stopped, seeing that her father was not alone. Philip rose involuntarily. Mr. Mavick looked up quickly. "Yes, presently. I've just now got a little business with Mr. Burnett." It was not an introduction. But for an instant the eyes of the young people met. It seemed to Philip that it was a recognition. Certainly the full, sweet eyes were bent on him for the second she stood there, before turning away and leaving the room. And she looked just as true and sweet as Philip dreamed she would look at home. He sat in a kind of maze for the quarter of an hour while Mavick was affixing his signature and giving some directions. He heard all the directions, and carried away the papers, but he also carried away something else unknown to the broker. After all, he found himself reflecting, as he walked down the avenue, the practice of the law has its good moments! What was there in this trivial incident that so magnified it in Philip's mind, day after day? Was it that he began to feel that he had established a personal relation with Evelyn because she had seen him? Nothing had really happened. Perhaps she had not heard his name, perhaps she did not carry the faintest image of him out of the room with her. Philip had read in romances of love at first sight, and he had personal experience of it. Commonly, in romances, the woman gives no sign of it, does not admit it to herself, denies it in her words and in her conduct, and never owns it until the final surrender. "When was the first moment you began to love me, dear?" "Why, the first moment, that day; didn't you know it then?" This we are led to believe is common experience with the shy and secretive sex. It is enough, in a thousand reported cases, that he passed her window on horseback, and happened to look her way. But with such a look! The mischief was done. But this foundation was too slight for Philip to build such a hope on. Looking back, we like to trace great results to insignificant, momentary incidents--a glance, a word, that turned the current of a life. There was a definite moment when the thought came to Alexander
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