ek as the young man suddenly leant a little
towards her and gazed earnestly into her eyes, which she dropped, but
instantly raised again.

"Yes--good-night," she held out her hand, with a taking gesture and
smile.

"Good-night," said Floyd, and passed on up the stairs to the
dressing-room. He got his coat and hat and came down the stairway. A
group seized him.

"Come to the club," they said. He declined.

"Roast oysters and beer," they said.

"No, I'm going home."

"Are you ill?" asked a friend.

"No, not at all. Why?"

"You look like a man who has seen a spirit."

"Do I? I'm tired, I suppose. Good-night,--good-night, gentlemen," and he
passed out.

"Perhaps I have," he said as he went down the cold steps into the frozen
street.

Floyd went home and tossed about all night. His life was breaking up,
he was all at sea. Why had he met her? He was losing the anchor that had
held him. "They call her the queen," the little girl had said. She must
be. He had seen her soul through her eyes.

Floyd sent her the poem which contained the line which she had
quoted; and she wrote him a note thanking him. It pleased him. It was
sympathetic. She invited him to call. He went to see her. She was fine
in grain and in look. A closely fitting dark gown ornamented by a single
glorious red rose which might have grown where it lay, and her soft hair
coiled on her small head, as she entered tall and straight and calm,
made Floyd involuntarily say to himself, "Yes"--

"She was right," he said, half to himself, half aloud, as he stood
gazing at her with inquiring eyes after she had greeted him cordially.

"What was right?" she asked.

"Something a little girl said about you."

"What was it?"

"I will tell you some day, when I know you better."

"Was it a compliment?"

"Yes."

"Tell me now."

"No, wait."

He came to know her better; to know her very well. He did not see her
very often, but he thought of her a great deal. He seemed to find in her
a sympathy which he needed. It reminded him of the past. He awoke from
his lethargy; began to work once more in the old way; mixed among
men again; grew brighter. "Henry Floyd is growing younger, instead of
older," someone said of him. "His health has been bad," said a doctor.
"He is improving. I thought at one time he was going to die." "He is
getting rich," said a broker, who had been a schoolmate of his. "I see
he has just invented a new something or other to relieve chi