Pardon me--"

He set down his plate of ice cream on the top shelf of Mrs. Solomon
Black's what-not, thereby deranging a careful group of sea-shells and
daguerreotypes, and walked quickly away.

Fanny's face flushed to a painful crimson; then as suddenly paled.
She was a proud girl, accustomed to love and admiration since early
childhood, when she had queened it over her playmates because her
yellow curls were longer than theirs, her cheeks pinker, her eyes
brighter and her slim, strong body taller. Fanny had never been
compelled to stoop from her graceful height to secure masculine
attention. It had been hers by a sort of divine right. She had not
been at all surprised when the handsome young minister had looked at
her twice, thrice, to every other girl's once, nor when he had
singled her out from the others in the various social events of the
country side.

Fanny had long ago resolved, in the secret of her own heart, that she
would never, never become the hard-worked wife of a plodding farmer.
Somewhere in the world--riding toward her on the steed of his
passionate desire--was the fairy prince; her prince, coming to lift
her out from the sordid commonplace of life in Brookville. Almost
from the very first she had recognized Wesley Elliot as her
deliverer.

Once he had said to her: "I have a strange feeling that I have known
you always." She had cherished the saying in her heart,
hoping--believing that it might, in some vague, mysterious way, be
true. And not at all aware that this pretty sentiment is as old as
the race and the merest banality on the masculine tongue, signifying:
"At this moment I am drawn to you, as to no other woman; but an hour
hence it may be otherwise." ... How else may man, as yet imperfectly
monogamous, find the mate for whom he is ever ardently questing? In
this woman he finds the trick of a lifted lash, or a shadowy dimple
in the melting rose of her cheek. In another, the stately curve of
neck and shoulder and the somber fire of dark eyes draws his roving
gaze; in a third, there is a soft, adorable prettiness, like that of
a baby. He has always known them--all. And thus it is, that love
comes and goes unbidden, like the wind which blows where it listeth;
and woman, hearing the sound thereof, cannot tell whence it cometh
nor whither it goeth.

In this particular instance Wesley Elliot had not chosen to examine
the secret movements of his own mind. Baldly speaking, he had
cherished a fle