her eyes,
she seemed in herself so far removed from mountain cabins, and if
Penelope had grown worthy of such distinguished company, discretion
bade me be silent.

Penelope divined my thoughts. "And it is equally hard for me to
believe that this tall man is the boy I pulled out of the water." Half
turning, she addressed her companion. "This is David Malcolm, Mrs.
Bannister--an old, old friend of mine."

Mrs. Bannister probably had her own ideas of Penelope's old, old
friends, but she was fair enough to examine me from head to foot before
she condemned me with the mass of them, and then finding that, to the
eyes at least, I presented no glaring crudities, she accepted me on
sufferance, inclining her head and parting her lips.

"But tell me, David," said Penelope eagerly, "where have you been all
these years and how do you happen to be here?"

Had I told Penelope the truth I should have replied that I happened to
be there because for four long months I had been looking for her,
whenever I could, walking the streets with eyes alert, even on
midsummer days when I had as well searched the Sahara as the deserted
town. Perhaps in thus surrendering to the hope that, after all, I
should find her, I had laid myself open to a self-accusation of
disloyalty to Gladys Todd; but she was far away in those months, and
the daily letter had become a weekly and then a semimonthly budget, and
though their tone was none the less ardent I had begun to suspect that
Europe was a more attractive abiding-place than the little flat with
the easel by the window. In one letter she spoke of her longing to be
home; she knew that there would be music in every beat of the ship's
propeller which carried her nearer me. In her next she announced her
parents' decision to prolong their stay abroad on Judge Bundy's account
and her regret that she could not leave them. There was something
contradictory in these statements, and yet I accepted them
complacently. Then postcards supplanted the semimonthly budget, and
only by them was I able to follow the movements of the travellers all
that autumn. One letter did come in October. It covered many sheets,
but said little more than that it had been simply impossible to write
oftener, but she would soon be following her heart homeward. Enclosed
was a photograph of the party posed on camels with the pyramids in the
background, and I noticed with a twinge of jealousy that Judge Bundy's
camel had posted