She threw a matchbox across.

Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new
position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first time
afforded him a full view of her face. "How many years have passed
since first we met!" she resumed, in a voice which she mainly
endeavored to maintain at its former pitch of composure, and eying him
with daring bashfulness.

"WE met, do you say?"

She nodded. "I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you were
passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized you as
one I had met in my girlhood. Do you remember, when you were studying
at Heidelberg, an English family that was staying there, who used to
walk--"

"And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair--ah, I
see it before my eyes!--who lost her gloves on the Great Terrace--who
was going back in the dusk to find them--to whom I said, 'I'll go for
them,' and you said, 'Oh, they are not worth coming all the way up
again for.' I DO remember, and how very long we stayed talking there! I
went next morning while the dew was on the grass: there they lay--the
little fingers sticking out damp and thin. I see them now! I picked
them up, and then--"

"Well?"

"I kissed them," he rejoined, rather shamefacedly.

"But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?"

"Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I wondered how I
could make the most of my trouvaille, and decided that I would call at
your hotel with them that afternoon. It rained, and I waited till next
day. I called, and you were gone."

"Yes," answered she, with dry melancholy. "My mother, knowing my
disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go falling
in love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away to Baden. As
it is all over and past I'll tell you one thing: I should have sent you
a line passing warm had I known your name. That name I never knew till
my maid said, as you passed up the hotel stairs a month ago, 'There's
Dr. Fitzpiers.'"

"Good Heaven!" said Fitzpiers, musingly. "How the time comes back to
me! The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot. When I found that
you really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed down my
back. I went up to where you had stood when I last saw you--I flung
myself on the grass, and--being not much more than a boy--my eyes were
literally blinded with tears. Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I
couldn't forg