ond to her advances.
I read the wonder in her face.

"You do not care for hasty friends," she said. "Well, Lance and I are
one; if you like him, you must like me, and time will show."

"You are more than good to me," I stammered, thinking in my heart if she
had been but half as good to the little helpless child she flung into
the sea.

I have never seen a woman more charming--of more exquisite grace--of
more perfect accomplishment--greater fascination of manner. She sang to
us, and her voice was full of such sweet pathos it almost brought the
tears in my eyes. I could not reconcile what I saw now with what I had
seen on the Chain Pier, though outwardly the same woman I had seen on
the Chain Pier and this graceful, gracious lady could not possibly be
one. As the evening passed on, and I saw her bright, cheerful ways, her
devotion to her husband, her candid, frank open manner, I came to the
conclusion that I must be the victim either of a mania or of some
terrible mistake. Was it possible, though, that I could have been? Had I
not had the face clearly, distinctly, before me for the past three
years?

One thing struck me during the evening. Watching her most narrowly, I
could not see in her any under-current of feeling; she seemed to think
what she said, and to say just what she thought; there were no musings,
no reveries, no fits of abstraction, such as one would think would go
always with sin or crime. Her attention was given always to what was
passing; she was not in the least like a person with anything weighing
on her mind. We were talking, Lance and I, of an old friend of ours, who
had gone to Nice, and that led to a digression on the different watering
places of England. Lance mentioned several, the climate of which he
declared was unsurpassed--those mysterious places of which one reads in
the papers, where violets grow in December, and the sun shines all the
year round. I cannot remember who first named Brighton, but I do
remember that she neither changed color nor shrank.

"Now for a test," I said to myself. I looked at her straight in the
face, so that no expression of hers could escape me--no shadow pass over
her eyes unknown to me.

"Do you know Brighton at all?" I asked her. I could see to the very
depths of those limpid eyes. No shadow came; the beautiful, attentive
face did not change in the least. She smiled as she replied:

"I do not. I know Bournemouth and Eastbourne very well; I like
Bournemouth