he was only subconsciously aware of a
woman passing his seat.

Slowly, as a man roused from deep sleep looks about him for the cause of
dimly heard noises, so now Thompson's eyes lifted from his book, and,
with his mind still half upon the last sentence read, his gaze followed
the girl now some forty feet distant in the long, quiet room.

There was no valid reason why the rustle of a woman's skirt in passing,
the faint suggestion of some delicate perfume, should have focussed his
attention. He saw scores of women and girls in the library every day. He
passed thousands on the streets. This one, now, upon whom he gazed with
a detached interest, was like many others, a girl of medium height,
slender, well-dressed.

That was all--until she paused at a desk to have speech with a library
assistant. She turned then so that her face was in profile, so that a
gleam of hair showed under a wide leghorn hat. And Thompson thought
there could scarcely be two women in the world with quite so marvellous
a similarity of face and figure and coloring, nor with quite the same
contour of chin and cheek, nor the same thick hair, yellow like the
husks of ripe corn or a willow leaf in the autumn. He was just as sure
that by some strange chance Sophie Carr stood at that desk as he was
sure of himself sitting in an oak chair at a reading table. And he rose
impulsively to go to her.

She turned away in the same instant and walked quickly down a passage
between the rows of shelved books. Thompson could not drive himself to
hurry, nor to call. He was sure--yet not too sure. He hated to make
himself appear ridiculous. Nor was he overconfident that if it were
indeed Sophie Carr she would be either pleased or willing to renew their
old intimacy. And so, lagging faint-heartedly, he lost her in the maze
of books.

But he did not quite give up. He was on the second floor. The windows on
a certain side overlooked the main entrance. He surmised that she would
be leaving. So he crossed to a window that gave on the library entrance
and waited for an eternity it seemed, but in reality a scant five
minutes, before he caught sight of a mauve suit on the broad steps.
Looking from above he could be less sure than when she stood at the
desk. But the girl halted at the foot of the steps and standing by a red
roadster turned to look up at the library building. The sun fell full
upon her upturned face. The distance was one easily to be spanned by
eyes as keen a