his destiny. He had pictured the desirable
one in day-dreams, and, merely because of his violent antipathy towards
the Eurasian element in the Far East, the dulcissima had appeared
invariably as a tall, slender creature, with the lightest of flaxen
hair and the grayest of gray eyes. Now, some alchemy devised by the
magician spirit of New York had fashioned his ideal, though slender,
not so tall, and she owned a wealth of brown hair, hair that shone and
glistened in every changing light, while her eyes were either blue or
violet, just as one happened to catch the glint of them. And she had
fascinating ways, too, which the lady of his fantasy could never have
displayed, or he would not have abandoned the vision so readily. When
she smiled, it was with lips and eyes in unison. When she spoke he
heard harmonies not framed in mere words, whereas the other fair dame
was unquestionably a deaf mute.

Indeed, while his glance was dwelling, to all outward semblance, on the
passing traffic of one of New York's busiest thoroughfares, he was
admitting to himself that he was deeply, irrevocably, in love, and the
knowledge was almost stupefying. To one of Curtis's temperament it
seemed to be a wildly fanciful thing that he should have yielded so
swiftly. Two hours ago he had not seen Hermione, did not even know her
name, whereas now he breathed it with devout reverence, though, with a
perverseness seldom attached to such circumstances, the amazing fact
that she was his wife formed a stubborn barrier against which the flood
of new-born desire must rage in vain. For, above all else, he held
dear his plighted word. He knew now that the marriage offered an
almost insuperable obstacle to any effort on his part to win the girl's
affections. In her despair she had trusted him, and he awoke with a
guilty start to consciousness of that winsome face being wrung with a
new terror if for one instant she had reason to suspect him of other
than the altruistic motives he had professed in giving her the
protection of his name.

Perhaps, in time--well, he was done now with moon-madness, and he
stepped briskly down the avenue, firm set in purpose to risk everything
for his wife's sake, and let the future rest in the lap of the gods.

This, be it noted, was his first stroll in New York. The night was
fine and clear, for Rafferty's diagnosis of "a touch of frost in the
air" was becoming justified, and no thoroughfare in the world could
len