s breath, he
added, "and what a stunning rider!"

She was only a girl--about eighteen or nineteen, he should judge by her
figure and the girlish poise of her small head--but she certainly knew
how to ride. She sat her horse as though a part of him, and controlled
his every motion as she would her own.

"Just that way might she manage a man," Paul thought, and then laughed
aloud at the absurdity of the thought. For he had never seen the girl
before.

Paul admired a good horsewoman--they are so pitifully few. And he
followed her, at a safe distance, with an interest unaccountable, even
to him. Finally she drew rein before one of the houses facing the Row,
dismounted, and throwing the train of her habit gracefully over her arm,
walked to the door with a brisk step. Paul instantly likened her to a
bird, so lightly tripping over the walk that her feet scarcely seemed to
touch the ground. She was a wee thing--certainly not more than five foot
tall--and _petite_, almost to an extreme. The Boy had expressed a
preference, only a few days before, for tall, magnificent women. Now he
suddenly discovered that the woman for a man to love should by all means
be short and small. He wondered why it had never occurred to him in that
light before, and thought of Jacques' question about Rosalind, "What
stature is she of?" and Orlando's reply, "As high as my heart!"

The girl who had aroused this train of thought had reached the big stone
steps by this time, and suddenly turning to look over her shoulder, just
as he passed the gate, met his gaze squarely. Gad! what eyes those
were!--full of mystery and magnetism, and--possibilities!

For an instant their eyes clung together in that strange mingling of
glances that sometimes holds even utter strangers spell-bound by its
compelling force.

Then she turned and entered the house, and Paul rode on.

But that glance went with him. It tormented him, troubled him, perplexed
him. He felt a mad desire to turn back, to follow her into that house,
and compel her to meet his eyes again. Did she know the power of her own
eyes? Did she know a look like that had almost the force of a caress?

He told himself that they were the most beautiful eyes that he had ever
seen--and yet he could not have told the color of them to save his soul.
He began to wonder about that. It vexed him that he could not remember.

"Eyes!" he thought, "those are not eyes! They are living magnets,
drawing a fellow on and o