aracteristic.
Perhaps it was because she was so tall that her voice sounded like
music dropped downward from a height.

There was a stir, a movement down each side of the table; it was
subtle, like the flutter of light and wind, and sympathetic, answering
to her footfall and the flowing rhythm of her gown. As it passed, Mrs.
Downey's face became if possible more luminous, Miss Bramble's figure
if possible more erect. A feeble flame flickered in Mr. Partridge's
cheeks; Mr. Soper began feeling nervously in his pocket for the box of
bon-bons, his talisman of success; while Mr. Spinks appeared as if
endeavouring to assume a mental attitude not properly his own. Miss
Bishop searched, double-chinned, for any crumbs that might have lodged
in the bosom of her blouse; and Flossie, oh, Flossie became more
demure, more correct, more absolutely the model of all propriety. Each
was so occupied with his or herself that no one noticed the very
remarkable behaviour of Mr. Rickman. He rose to his feet. He turned
his back on Flossie. There was a look on his face as of a man seized
with sudden terror, and about to fly.

In turning he found himself face to face with Lucia Harden.

He had the presence of mind to stand back and draw her chair from the
table for her; so that his action appeared the natural movement of
politeness.

Though she held out her hand by an instinct of recognition, there was
a perceptible pause before she spoke. He had known that it was she
before he saw her. She had to look at him twice to make quite sure.

And then, being sure, she smiled; not the slow, cold smile of
politeness that dies downwards on the lips, but the swift smile of
pleasure that leaps to the eyes and forehead.

"Mr. Rickman--? I think I should have known you anywhere else; but I
didn't expect to meet you here."

He looked at her courageously.

And as he looked there fell from him the past five years, the long
estranging years of bitterness and misery and vain desire, and the
years, still more estranging, of his madness and his folly; and not
the thinnest phantom shadow of time divided him from the days of
Harmouth, That moment of recognition annihilated all between; a lustre
of his life swept away in one sweep of her eyelids, dropped fathom
deep and forgotten in the gaze of her pure and tender eyes. It was not
the Lucia of their last meeting; the tragic and terrible Lucia who had
been so divided from him by her suffering and her grief. As