ion? He could not have described one
article of her dress, and yet it was complete in his thought. She had
worn a soft silk of a dull-red shade, with a frill of cream lace
about the shoulders, and there were pink roses under the brim of her
dull-red hat, and under the roses was her face, shaded softly with a
great puff of her dark hair. And her dark eyes under the dark hair
had in them the very light of morning dew, which sparkled back both
this world and heaven itself into the eyes of the looker, all
reflected in tiny crystal spheres. Suddenly the man gazing across the
church had seen in this girl's face all there was of earth and the
overhang of heaven; he had seen the present and the future. It is
through the face of another human being that one gets the furthest
reach of human vision, and that furthest reach had now come for the
first time to Randolph Anderson. All at once a quiver ran through his
entire consciousness from this elongated vision, and he realized
sight to its uttermost. Yet it did not dawn on him that he was in
love with this girl. He would have laughed at the idea. He had seen
her only twice; he had spoken to her only once. He knew nothing of
her except that she had given him a worthless check to cash. Love
could not come to him in this wise, and it had not, in fact. He had
only attained to the comprehension of love. He had gotten faith, he
had seen the present world and the world to come in the light of it,
but not as yet his own soul. Yet always he saw the girl's head under
the pink roses under the brim of the dark-red hat. It was evidently a
favorite headgear of hers. She had worn it with a white dress when
she had come to the store to get the check cashed. But he had not
seen her so fully then. His little doubt and bewilderment over the
check had clouded his vision. Now, since he had seen her in the
church-pew, his last thrifty scruple as to ignoring the matter of the
check left him. He felt that he could not put his doubt of her father
to the proof. Suppose that the account had not been carelessly
overdrawn-- Suppose-- He never for one instant suspected the girl. As
soon suspect a rosebud of foregoing its own sweet personality, and of
being in reality something else, say a stinging nettle. The girl
carried her patent royal of youth and innocence on her face. He made
up his mind to say nothing about the check, to lose the ten dollars,
and, since dollars were so far from plenty with him, to sacrifi