the most insignificant little things--as long as
they come at the psychological moment: the glimpse of a face at an
unusual angle, an evanescent attitude, the curve of a cheek often looked
at before, perhaps, but then, at the moment, charged with astonishing
significance. These are great mysteries, of course. Magic signs.

I don't know in what the sign consisted in this case. It might have been
her pallor (it wasn't pasty nor yet papery) that white face with eyes
like blue gleams of fire and lips like red coals. In certain lights, in
certain poises of head it suggested tragic sorrow. Or it might have been
her wavy hair. Or even just that pointed chin stuck out a little,
resentful and not particularly distinguished, doing away with the
mysterious aloofness of her fragile presence. But any way at a given
moment Anthony must have suddenly _seen_ the girl. And then, that
something had happened to him. Perhaps nothing more than the thought
coming into his head that this was "a possible woman."

Followed this waylaying! Its resolute character makes me think it was
the chin's doing; that "common mortal" touch which stands in such good
stead to some women. Because men, I mean really masculine men, those
whose generations have evolved an ideal woman, are often very timid. Who
wouldn't be before the ideal? It's your sentimental trifler, who has
just missed being nothing at all, who is enterprising, simply because it
is easy to appear enterprising when one does not mean to put one's belief
to the test.

Well, whatever it was that encouraged him, Captain Anthony stuck to Flora
de Barral in a manner which in a timid man might have been called heroic
if it had not been so simple. Whether policy, diplomacy, simplicity, or
just inspiration, he kept up his talk, rather deliberate, with very few
pauses. Then suddenly as if recollecting himself:

"It's funny. I don't think you are annoyed with me for giving you my
company unasked. But why don't you say something?"

I asked Miss de Barral what answer she made to this query.

"I made no answer," she said in that even, unemotional low voice which
seemed to be her voice for delicate confidences. "I walked on. He did
not seem to mind. We came to the foot of the quarry where the road winds
up hill, past the place where you were sitting by the roadside that day.
I began to wonder what I should do. After we reached the top Captain
Anthony said that he had not been for a