was asleep, and as the train slowed into the
big station in the pale glimmer of the winter morning, Mary walked to
the end of the car. The stop would be twenty minutes, and as the train
gave its last jerk Mary jumped on to the platform.

The sky was of a faint, milky blue, like the blue that moves under the
white cloud in a moonstone, and the first far down ray of morning sun,
coming up with the balmy wind from still, secret places where the youth
of the world slept, shimmered golden as a buttercup held under the
pearly chin of a child. This was only Marseilles, but already the smell
of the south was in the air, the scent of warm salt sea, of eucalyptus
logs burning, and pine trees and invisible orange groves. On the
platform, osier baskets packed full of flowers sent out wafts of
perfume; and as Mary stood gazing over the heads of the crowd at the
lightening sky, she thought the dawn rushed up the east like a
torchbearer, bringing good news. Just for a moment she forgot everybody,
and could have sung for joy of life--a feeling new to her, though
something deep down in herself had whispered that it was there and she
might know it if she would. It was such faint whisperings as this which,
repeated often, had driven her from the convent.

"How young I am!" she thought, for once actively self-conscious. "How
young I am, and how young the world is!"

She let her eyes fall from the sky and plunge into the turmoil of the
station, turmoil of people getting in and out of trains, of porters
running with luggage, of restaurant employes wheeling stands of food
through the crowd, piled oranges and mandarines, and white grapes,
decorated with leaves and a few flowers; soldiers arriving or saying
goodbye, jolly dark youths in red and blue; an Arab trying to sell
scarfs from Algiers; a Turkish family travelling; English men and women
newly landed, with P. & O. labels large on their hand-bags; French
_bonnes_ wearing quaint stiff caps and large floating ribbons; Indian
ayahs wrapped in shawls. Mary gazed at the scene as if it were a
panorama, and scarcely dwelt upon individuals until her eyes were drawn
by the eyes of a man.

It was when she had mounted the steps of her own car, and turned once
more before going in. So she looked down at the man looking up.

She blushed under the eyes, for there was something like adoration in
them, romantic admiration such as a man may feel for the picture of a
lovely saint against a golden backg