ion--standing alone in the woods. The small, temporary bustle about
the waiting train was not discordant with the dreamy, restful look of
the whole picture. Then the culminating hurry, the shriek and rattle of
the starting train--a little figure poising itself for an instant on the
car step--a face flushed a little, and dark eyes brightened with a flash
of surprised recognition--a quick gesture of greeting and farewell, and
then she was gone into the purple shades of evening.

Once again he had seen her, but from afar off, in the glare and heat of
a crowded assembly room. The face was a little thinner now, and the eyes
were looking farther away than ever. The blood-red light of rubies
flashed in the soft lace at her throat and wrists, and dropped in
glittering pendants against the slender neck. She was talking evidently
of a brilliant bouquet of pomegranates and daphnes that lay in her lap,
swinging dreamily the dainty, glittering white fan. And while he looked,
she drew away the heavy brocade she wore, from under a careless tread--a
slight, slow motion, wholly unlike the careless sweeps of other women.
The imperious nature that thrilled her even to the tips of the long
fingers, manifested itself, as inborn natures always do, under the
deepest disguises, in just this unconscious, most trifling of acts; and,
remembering the gesture, he asked, with words far lighter than the tone
or feeling:

'As much of a princess as ever?'

And Captain George answered:

'As much of a princess!' both unmindful that no word had been spoken to
token who was in the thought of each.

Very trifling things these were to remember. Very likely he had seen
scores of far more graceful and memorable scenes; but just these
trifles, coming back so vividly, proved to him, as nothing else could
have done, with what a keen, intense sympathy every word and look of
hers had been noted.

The spoken words roused him. In the ride that followed, twenty different
persons and things came into their talk; but never once the princess.
_That_, arousing himself again from his half-dreamful lapse from the old
guarded habit, was put away steadily and quietly. His battle had been
fought once. He was not to weaken his victory with fancies of the 'might
have been.' He had not been tempted, through all these months; he would
not tempt himself, now that real trial was so near at hand. Man as he
was, if escape had been possible, he would have fled. But there was
not