ressed a single word.

The general opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, there are, after
all, very few people who know what love really is. And among those that
know, fewer there are that tell. A lexicographer, deservedly forgotten,
has defined it as an exchange of fancies, the contact of two epiderms.
Another, wiser if less epigrammatic, announced it as a something that no
one knew what, coming no one knew whence, and ending no one knew how.
But in whatever fashion it may be described, one thing is certain, it
has been largely over-rated.

In the case of Tristrem Varick it appeared in its most perfect form. The
superlative is used advisedly. Love has a hundred aspects, a thousand
toilets. It may come at first sight, in which event, if it be enduring,
it is, as Balzac has put it, a resultant of that prescience which is
known as second sight. Or, it may come of the gradual fusion of two
natures. It may come of propinquity, of curiosity, of sympathy, of
hatred. It may come of the tremors of adolescence, the mutual attraction
of one sex for the other; and, again, it may come of natural selection,
of the discernment which leads a man through mazes of women to one in
particular, to the woman who to him is the one woman in the world and
manacles him at her feet. If Tristrem Varick had not met Miss Raritan,
it is more than probable that he never would have known the meaning of
the word.

When the first surprise at the discovery waned, delight took its place.
He saw her amber eyes, he recalled as she had crossed the room the
indolent undulation of her hips, he breathed the atmosphere of health
which she exhaled, and in his ears her voice still rang. The _Non piu
mesta_ of her song seemed almost a promise, and the _O Magali_ an
invitation. He recalled the movement of her lips, and fell to wondering
what her name might be. At first he fancied that it might be Stella; but
that, for some occult reason which only a lover would understand, he
abandoned for Thyra, a name which pleasured him awhile and which he
repeated aloud until it became sonorous as were it set in titles. But
presently some defect presented itself, it sounded less apt, more suited
to a blue-eyed daughter of a viking than to one so _brune_ as she.
Decidedly, Thyra did not suit her. And yet her name might be something
utterly commonplace, such as Fanny, for instance, or Agnes, or Gertrude.
But that was a possibility which he declined to entertain. When a girl