“With pleasure—­if I may.”

“Oh, it doesn’t belong to any one.  It isn’t Esther’s because it’s too old and it begins ‘Dearest wife’ and it isn’t Mary’s because it isn’t Doctor Coombe’s writing; so you see I thought it might not hurt anybody if I pretended it was mine.”

“No,” gently, “I do not see why it would.”

“I never had a love letter of my own.  Or if I did I cannot find it.  The only thing I ever had with love in it was the ruby ring, and that—­”

She checked herself suddenly; her small face freezing into such a mask of tragedy that Callandar was alarmed.  But to his quick “What is it?” she returned no answer and the expression passed as quickly as it had come.

When he held out his hand for the letter, she seemed to have forgotten it.  Her gaze had again grown restless and vague.  It would do no good to question further, the rare hour of confession was past.

“You both look very comfortable, I’m sure!” It was Esther’s laughing voice.  She had come so quietly that neither of them had heard her.  Aunt Amy’s vagueness vanished in a pleased smile and Callandar, as he sprang to open the gate, forgot all about the unread letter and everything else, save that she had come.

Why was it, he wondered, that he could never recall her, save in dulled tints.  Lovely as she had lingered in his memory, her living beauty was so much lovelier.  There, in the shade of the elm, her blue dress flecked with gold, the warm pallor of heat upon her face, her hair lying close and heavy, a little pulse beating where the low collar softly disclosed the slim roundness of her white throat, she was not only beautiful, she was Beauty.  She was not only Beauty, she was Herself, the one woman in the world!  He acknowledged it now, with all humility.

The girl greeted him quietly.  She did not, as was her custom, look up at him with that sweet widening of the eyes which he had learned to hunger for.  The truth was that she, too, was moving slowly toward her awakening.  The days in which they had not met had been full of thoughts of him.  Dreams had come to her, vague, delicious bits of fancy which had whispered in her ear and passed, leaving a new softness in her eyes, a new flush upon her cheek.  There was about her a dewy freshness which seemed to brighten up the world.  Vaguely her girl friends wondered what had “come over” Esther Coombe, and at home Aunt Amy’s pathetic eyes followed her, dim with a half-memory of long past joy.  But it was Mrs. Sykes’ Ann who best expressed the change in her beauty when, one day, she said to Bubble:  “Esther Coombe looks like she was all lighted up inside and when she walks you’d think the wind was blowing her.”

So it happened that while yesterday she might still have smiled into the doctor’s eyes as she greeted him, to-day she shook hands without looking at his face at all.

Callandar found himself remarking that it was a fine day.  Esther said that it was beautiful—­but dusty.  A little rain would do good.  She fanned herself with her broad hat, and stopped fanning to examine closely a tiny stain on the hem of her frock.