onscious
man striding by her side. Unconscious? I don't know. First of all, I
felt certain that this was no chance meeting. Something had happened
before. Was he a man for a _coup-de-foudre_, the lightning stroke of
love? I don't think so. That sort of susceptibility is luckily rare.
A world of inflammable lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type would very
soon end in barbarism and misery. But it is a fact that in every man
(not in every woman) there lives a lover; a lover who is called out in
all his potentialities often by the most insignificant little things--as
long as they come at the psychological moment: the glimpse of a face at
an unusual angle, an evanescent attitude, the curve of a cheek often
looked at before, perhaps, but then, at the moment, charged with
astonishing significance. These are great mysteries, of course. Magic
signs.

I don't know in what the sign consisted in this case. It might have
been her pallor (it wasn't pasty nor yet papery) that white face with
eyes like blue gleams of fire and lips like red coals. In certain
lights, in certain poises of head it suggested tragic sorrow. Or it
might have been her wavy hair. Or even just that pointed chin stuck out
a little, resentful and not particularly distinguished, doing away with
the mysterious aloofness of her fragile presence. But any way at a
given moment Anthony must have suddenly _seen_ the girl. And then, that
something had happened to him. Perhaps nothing more than the thought
coming into his head that this was "a possible woman."

Followed this waylaying! Its resolute character makes me think it was
the chin's doing; that "common mortal" touch which stands in such good
stead to some women. Because men, I mean really masculine men, those
whose generations have evolved an ideal woman, are often very timid.
Who wouldn't be before the ideal? It's your sentimental trifler, who
has just missed being nothing at all, who is enterprising, simply
because it is easy to appear enterprising when one does not mean to put
one's belief to the test.

Well, whatever it was that encouraged him, Captain Anthony stuck to
Flora de Barral in a manner which in a timid man might have been called
heroic if it had not been so simple. Whether policy, diplomacy,
simplicity, or just inspiration, he kept up his talk, rather deliberate,
with very few pauses. Then suddenly as if recollecting himself:

"It's funny. I don't think you are annoyed with m