"You both look very comfortable, I'm sure!" It was Esther's laughing
voice. She had come so quietly that neither of them had heard her. Aunt
Amy's vagueness vanished in a pleased smile and Callandar, as he sprang
to open the gate, forgot all about the unread letter and everything
else, save that she had come.

Why was it, he wondered, that he could never recall her, save in dulled
tints. Lovely as she had lingered in his memory, her living beauty was
so much lovelier. There, in the shade of the elm, her blue dress flecked
with gold, the warm pallor of heat upon her face, her hair lying close
and heavy, a little pulse beating where the low collar softly disclosed
the slim roundness of her white throat, she was not only beautiful, she
was Beauty. She was not only Beauty, she was Herself, the one woman in
the world! He acknowledged it now, with all humility.

The girl greeted him quietly. She did not, as was her custom, look up
at him with that sweet widening of the eyes which he had learned to
hunger for. The truth was that she, too, was moving slowly toward her
awakening. The days in which they had not met had been full of thoughts
of him. Dreams had come to her, vague, delicious bits of fancy which had
whispered in her ear and passed, leaving a new softness in her eyes, a
new flush upon her cheek. There was about her a dewy freshness which
seemed to brighten up the world. Vaguely her girl friends wondered what
had "come over" Esther Coombe, and at home Aunt Amy's pathetic eyes
followed her, dim with a half-memory of long past joy. But it was Mrs.
Sykes' Ann who best expressed the change in her beauty when, one day,
she said to Bubble: "Esther Coombe looks like she was all lighted up
inside and when she walks you'd think the wind was blowing her."

So it happened that while yesterday she might still have smiled into the
doctor's eyes as she greeted him, to-day she shook hands without looking
at his face at all.

Callandar found himself remarking that it was a fine day. Esther said
that it was beautiful--but dusty. A little rain would do good. She
fanned herself with her broad hat, and stopped fanning to examine
closely a tiny stain on the hem of her frock.

"Dear me," she said, "I'm afraid it's axle grease! Mournful Mark gave me
a lift this morning."

"Oh, I hope not!" anxiously from Aunt Amy, and referring, presumably, to
the grease.

The doctor looked at the little stray curl on the nape of the graceful
neck a