t for. He wished
she were "further!"--for he could quote five different remarks of his
own uttered to her that very day, which he saw plainly enough, _now_,
nobody but a perfect fool could have made.

"Oh! Great Scott! What did possess me to drag her into my confidence?"

He "wondered if mesmerism had anything"--but rejected that explanation
with disdain and dismissed the subject. And then this strange thing
happened: He was standing looking into a show-window made gorgeous with
hot-house flowers, when a very low voice close at hand moaned, "O Lord,
no! I simply made an ass of myself," and when he turned sharply around
no one was anywhere near.

He returned to his room and went to bed and to sleep wishing "to
gracious" he might see her once more and once only, simply to show her
that he had nothing more to confide--to her or any similar soft-smiling
she!--The s's are his.

He did not rise early next morning. And in this he was wise. Rejoice,
oh, young man, in your project, but know that old men, without projects,
hearing will not hear--until they have seen their mail and their
cashier; the early worm rarely catches the bird. John had just learned
this in Pulaski City.

At breakfast he was again startled by a low voice very close to him. It
was Mr. Fair.

"Mr. March, why not come over and sit with us?"

The ladies bowed from a table on the far side of the room. Mrs. Fair
seemed as handsome as ever; while Miss Garnet!--well! If she was winsome
and beautiful yesterday, with that silly, facing-both-ways traveling cap
she had worn, what could a reverent young man do here and now but gasp
his admiration under his breath as he followed his senior toward them?

Even in the lively conversation which followed he found time to think it
strange that she had never seemed to him half so lovely in Suez; was it
his over-sight? Maybe not, for in Suez she had never in life been half
so happy. Mrs. Fair could see this with her eyes shut, and poor Barbara
could see that she saw it by the way she shut her eyes. But John, of
course, was blind enough, and presently concluded that the wonder of
this crescent loveliness was the old, old wonder of the opening rose.
Meanwhile the talk flowed on.

"And by that time," said John, "you'd missed your connection. I might
have guessed it. Now you'll take--but you've hardly got time----"

No, Mrs. Fair was feeling rather travel weary; this was Saturday; they
would pass Sunday here and start r