heads craned toward the judges'
stand, his own gaze became a stare focused on a point near his elbow.

He stared because he had seen, as it seemed to him, a miracle, and the
miracle was a girl. It was, at all events, nothing short of miraculous
that such a girl should be discovered standing, apparently
unaccompanied, down in this bricked area, a few yards from the paddock
and the stools of the bookmakers.

Unlike his own, her eyes had remained constant to the outcome of the
race, and now her face was averted, so that only the curve of one
cheek, a small ear and a curling tendril of brown hair under the wide,
soft brim of her Panama hat rewarded him for the surrender of the
spectacle on the track.

Most ears, he found himself reflecting with, a sense of triumphant
discovery, simply grow on the sides of heads, but this one might have
been fashioned and set by a hand gifted with the exquisite perfection
of the jeweler's art.

A few moments before, the spot where she stood had been empty save for
a few touts and trainers. It seemed inconceivable, in the abrupt
revelation of her presence, that she could, like himself, have been
simply cut off from companions and left for the interval waiting. He
caught himself casting about for a less prosaic explanation. Magic
would seem to suit her better than mere actuality. She was sinuously
slender, and there was a splendid hint of gallantry in the unconscious
sweep of her shoulders. He was conscious that the simplicity of her
pongee gown loaned itself to an almost barbaric freedom of carriage
with the same readiness as do the draperies of the Winged Victory.
Yet, even the Winged Victory achieves her grace by a pose of
triumphant action, while this woman stood in repose except for the
delicate forward-bending excitement of watching the battle in the
stretch.

The man was not, by nature, susceptible. Women as sex magnates had
little part in his life cosmos. The interest he felt now with
electrical force, was the challenge that beauty in any form made upon
his enthusiasm. Perhaps, that was why he stood all unrealizing the
discourtesy of his gaping scrutiny--a scrutiny that, even with her
eyes turned away, she must have felt.

At all events, he must see her face. As the crescendo of the
grandstand's suspense graduated into the more positive note of climax
and began to die, she turned toward him. Her lips were half-parted,
and the sun struck her cheeks and mouth and chin into a deli