second fingers, a
cigarette, the blue smoke of which curled upward in transparent spirals
upon the clear, still air.

As the lady of the gray-green gown retired precipitately within the
Temple, a wave of hot blood passed over Richard's body. For
notwithstanding his three-and-twenty years, his not contemptible
mastery of many matters, and that same honourable appointment of
Justice of the Peace for the county of Southampton, he was but a lad
yet, with all a lad's quickness of sensitive shame and burning
resentment. The girl's repulsion had been obvious---that instinctive
repulsion, as poor Dickie's too acute sympathies assured him, of the
whole for the maimed, of the free for the bound, of the artist for some
jarring colour or sound which mars an otherwise entrancing harmony. And
the smart of all this was, to him, doubly salted by the fact that he,
after all, was a man, his critic merely a woman. The bitter mood of the
earlier hours of the day returned upon him. He cursed himself for a
doting fool. Who was he, indeed, to seek revelation of glad secrets,
cherish fair dreams and tempt adventures?

Consequently it fell out when that other lady--she of the
cigarette--advanced thus delightfully towards him, Richard's face was
white with anger, and his lips rigid with pain--a rigidity begotten of
the determination that they should not tremble in altogether too
unmanly fashion. Sometimes it is very sad to be young. The flesh is
still very tender, so that a scratch hurts more than a sword-thrust
later. Only, let it be remembered, the scratch heals readily; while of
the sword-thrust we die, even though at the moment of receiving it we
seem not so greatly to suffer. And unquestionably as Dickie sat there,
on his handsome horse, hat in hand, looking down at the lady of the
cigarette, the hurt of that lately received scratch began quite
sensibly to lessen. For her eyes, their first unsparing scrutiny
accomplished, rested on his with a strangely flattering and engaging
insistence.

"But this is the very prettiest piece of good fortune!" she exclaimed.
"Had I arranged the whole matter to suit my own fancy it could not have
turned out more happily."

Her tone was that of convincing sincerity; while, as she spoke, the
soft colour came and went in her cheeks, and her lips parting showed
little, even teeth daintily precious as a row of pearls. The outline of
her face was remarkably pure--in shape an oval, a trifle wide in
proportion