asculine figure. A hasty apology, a
startled glance of appeal, a quick breath that parted her lips, and she
was past the stranger. But not before she had caught in his eyes a look
that quickened her heart, that soothed her angry humility. The sudden
sincere admiration, the involuntary tribute to her charm, was new to
her, but the instinct of countless generations made it as plain and as
much her prerogative as if she had been the most successful debutante.
She was not, then, an object of pity, to be treasured for the sake of
the old days; other men, too--the impulse outstripped thought, but she
caught up with it.

"How dreadful!" she murmured, with a consciousness of undreamed depths
in herself. "Of course he is the only one--the only one!" and across the
water she begged his forgiveness.

But through all her agony of doubt in the days that followed, one shame
was miraculously removed, one hope sang faintly beneath: she, too, had
her power! A glance in the street had called her from one army of her
sisters to the other, and the difference was inestimable.

Her classes stared at her with naive admiration. The girls in the house
begged for her as a chaperon to Amherst entertainments, and sulked
when a report that the young hosts found her too attractive to enable
strangers to distinguish readily between her and her charges rendered
another selection advisable. The fact that her interest in them was
fitful, sometimes making her merry and intimate, sometimes relegating
them to a connection purely professional, only left her more interesting
to them; and boxes of flowers, respectful solicitations to spreads, and
tempting invitations to long drives through the lengthening afternoons
began to elect her to an obvious popularity. Once it would have meant
much to her; she marvelled now at the little shade of jealousy with
which her colleagues assured her of it. How long must she wait? When
would life be real again?

She seemed to herself to move in a dream that heightened and strained
quicker as it neared an inevitable shock of waking--to what? Even at the
best, to what? Even supposing that--she put it boldly, as if it had been
another woman--she should marry the man who had asked her seven years
ago, what was there in the very obvious future thus assured her that
could match the hopes her heart held out? How could it be at once
the golden harbor, the peaceful end of hurried, empty years, and the
delicious, shifting unrest th