at this moment, in the ardent awakening of his temperament, there
existed no memory of the past occasions upon which other women had
allured as irresistibly his inflamed imagination. So far as his
immediate reflections were concerned Laura might have been the solitary
woman upon a solitary planet. If he had paused to remember he might have
recalled that he had fallen in love with the girl whom he afterward
married between the sunset and the moonrise of a single day--that his
passion for Madame Alta leaped, full armed, into being during her
singing of the balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet"--but he did not pause
to remember, for with that singular forgetfulness which characterises
the man of pleasure, the present sensation, however small, was still
sufficient to lessen the influence of former loves.

They strolled slowly down to Gramercy Park, and this time, as they stood
together before her door, she asked him, flushing a little, if he would
not come inside.

"I only wish I could," he answered, taking out his watch, "but I've
promised to meet a man at the club on the stroke of five. If you'll
extend the privilege, however, I'll take advantage of it before many
days."

His words ended in a laugh, but she felt a moment afterward, as she
entered the house and he turned away, that he had looked at her as no
man had ever done in her life before. She grew hot all over as she
thought of it, yet there had been nothing to resent in his easy freedom
and she was not angry. The gay deference was still in his eyes, but
beneath it she had been conscious for an instant that the whole magnetic
current of his personality flowed to her through his look. That the
glance he had bent upon her was one of his most effective methods of
impressing his individuality she did not know. Gerty could have told her
that he resorted to it invariably at the psychological instant--and so,
perhaps, could Madame Alta had she chosen to be confidential. As a
conscious or unconscious trick of manner it had served its purpose in
many a place when words appeared a difficult or dangerous medium of
expression--but to Laura in her almost cloistral ignorance it was at
once a revelation and an enlightenment. When it passed from her she
found that the face of the whole world was changed.

Indoors Mr. Wilberforce and Gerty Bridewell were awaiting her, but it
seemed to her that her attitude toward them had grown less
intimate--that she herself, her friends, and eve