g so kind to me the night of that accident
on the train coming up from the South." Poor Dosia instantly felt
committed to a mistake. Her eyes fell for a moment on his hand, as it
lay upon the table, with a terribly disconcerting remembrance that hers
had not only rested in it, but that in fancy she had more than once
pillowed her cheek upon it, and, knowing that he had seen the look, she
continued in desperation, with still increasing stiffness and formality:
"I have always known, of course, that it was you. You must pardon me for
not thanking you before."

The old unapproachable manner instantly incased him, as if in
remembrance of something that hurt. "Oh, pray don't mention it," he
said, with a formality that matched hers. "It was nothing but what
anyone would have done--little enough, anyway."

What happened afterward she did not know, except that in a few minutes
he had gone.

She watched him go off down the path with that swift, long, easy step;
watched till the last vestige of the gray suit was out of sight--he had
a fashion of wearing gray!--before clearing off the table. Then she went
and sat on the back steps that led into the little garden, bright with
the sunshine and a blaze of tulips at her feet....

She had never supposed that any girl could care for a man until he had
shown that he cared for her--it was the unmaidenly, impossible thing.
And now--how beautiful he was, how dear! A wistful smile trembled around
her lips. All that had gone before with other men suddenly became as
nothing, forgotten and out of mind, and she herself made clean by this
purifying fire. Even if she never had anything more in her whole life,
she had this--even if she never had anything more. Yet what had she?
Nothing and less than nothing. If he had ever thought of her, if he had
ever dreamed of her, if her soft, frightened hand trustfully clinging
fast to his, only to be comforted by his touch, had been a sign and a
symbol to him of some dearer trust and faith for him alone--if in some
way, as she dimly visioned it, the thought had once been his, it had
gone long ago. Every action showed it. And yet, and yet--so
unconquerably does the soul speak that, though he might deny her
attraction for him, she knew that she had it. It was something to which
he might never give way, but it was unalterably there--as it was
unalterably there with her. All that year at home, when she believed she
had not been thinking of him, she really had