table strewn with weeklies and monthlies for the advantage of those
clients who must be asked to wait. He seated himself with his face so
directed that if an acquaintance should enter, he need not bow, and
turned over the magazines one after the other. It hurt him like a direct
personal injury to find these authors all alike so shallow, dishonest,
giving the public not their thought or their experience, but something,
anything, it would buy.

"A little more air and exercise is what I evidently need," said the
young man, and again went out into the streets.

He turned toward the river, and had not followed the Lungarno for more
than ten yards before it was with him as when, looking out of the window
in despair at the weather, we see a break in the clouds. His step took
on alertness; his face lighted in the very nicest way.

The young lady on whom his eyes were fastened from afar did not see him.
She came at her usual step, a happy mean between quick and slow,
accompanied by a hatless serving-woman carrying a music-roll. She looked
straight before her, but her glance was absent. The passers could not
but notice her,--she had beauty enough for that, and was besides
conspicuous in wearing a costume entirely white,--but she was not
noticing them or the eyes that turned to keep her a moment longer in
sight. She looked rather shut in herself, rather silent; not really
proud and cold, but proud and cold as the feeling and modest and young
have to look if they are to keep their sacred precincts from the
intrusions of curiosity.

The young man approaching questioned her face to see if it were sad. No,
as far as he could tell, she was not in any way troubled. At the same
time he knew that it was neither a face nor a nature to be easily read.
Still, not to find her visibly sad comforted him.

She did not recognize the young man till he was almost near enough to
touch her, and she had heard her name called, "Brenda!"

Then her face showed a genuine, if moderate, pleasure.

"Gerald!"

"What are you doing?" he asked, with the freedom of a familiarity
reaching back over long years. He shortened his step to keep time with
hers, which she at the same moment lengthened.

"I have been for my singing-lesson."

"And where are you going?"

"Home."

"I haven't seen you for ages."

"You haven't come. One never sees you, one never meets you anywhere any
more."

Her English was different from the ordinary in having occasional It