r cross the hall, with a
defiant and energetic rustle of skirts. When she entered the room, and
held out her hand, I saw that she was dressed in her walking gown. There
were soft brown furs about her throat, and on her head she wore a small
fur hat, with a bunch of violets at one side, under a thin white veil.

"I was just going to walk," she said, breathing a little quickly, while
her eyes, very wide and bright, held that puzzled and resolute look I
remembered; "will you come with me?"

She turned at once to the door, as if eager to leave the house, and
while I followed her through the hall, and down the short flight of
steps to the pavement, I was conscious of a sharp presentiment that I
should never again cross that threshold.

CHAPTER XV

A MEETING IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN

I spoke no word of love in that brisk walk up Franklin Street, and when
I remembered this a month afterwards, it seemed to me that I had let the
opportunity of a lifetime slip by. Since that afternoon I had not seen
Sally again--some fierce instinct held me back from entering the doors
that would have closed against me--and as the days passed, crowded with
work and cheered by the immediate success of the National Oil Company, I
felt that Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca, and even Sally, whom I loved, had
faded out of the actual world into a vague cloud-like horizon. To women
it is given, I suppose, to merge the ideal into everyday life, but with
men it is different. I saw Sally still every minute that I lived, but I
saw her as a star, set high above the common business world in which I
had my place--above the strain and stress of the General's office, above
the rise and fall of the stock market, above the brisk triumphant war
with competitors for the National Oil Company, above even the hope of
the future presidency of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad.
Between my love and its fulfilment, stretched, I knew, hard years of
struggle, but bred in me, bone and structure, the instinct of democracy
was still strong enough to support me in the hour of defeat. Never
once--not even when I sat, condescendingly plied with coffee and
partridges, face to face with the wonder expressed in Miss Mitty's eyes,
had I admitted to myself that I was obliged to remain in the class from
which I had sprung. Courage I had never lost for an instant; the present
might embarrass me, but the future, I felt always, I held securely
grasped in my own hands. Th