was aware of the gaze of the passers-by it was difficult to guess, for her air of demure simplicity was proof against penetration.  She was one of those dainty little creatures who seem to see best with the eyes downcast; but when she lifted her dark lashes, the darker from contrast with the golden hair, to sweep heaven and earth in a blue glance that belonged less to scrutiny than to prayer, the effort seemed to create a shyness causing the lids, dusky as some flowers are, to drop heavily into place again, like curtains over a masterpiece.  It was so that they rose and fell before Strange, her eyes meeting his in a look that no Argentine beauty could ever have bestowed, in that it was free from coquetry or intention, and wholly accidental.

It was in fact this accidental element, with its lack of preparation, that gave the electric thrill to both.  That is to say, in Strange the thrill was electric; as for her, she gave no sign further than that she opened her parasol and raised it to shade her face.  Having done this she continued to sit in undisturbed composure, though she probably saw through her fringing lashes that the tall, good-looking young man still stood spellbound, not twenty yards away.

Strange, on his part, was aware of the unconventionality of his behavior, though he was incapable of moving on.  He felt the occasion to be one which justified him in transcending the established rules of courtesy.  He was face to face with the being who met not only all the longings of his earthly love, but the higher, purer aspirations that accompanied it.  It was not, so he said to himself, a chance meeting; it was one which the ages had prepared, and led him up to.  She was “his type of girl” only in so far as she distilled the essence of his gross imaginings and gave them in their exquisite reality.  So, too, she was the incarnation of his dreams only because he had yearned for something mundane of which she was the celestial, and the true, embodiment.  He had that sense of the insufficiency of his own powers of preconception which comes to a blind man when he gets his sight and sees a rose.

He was so lost in the wonder of the vision that he had to be awakened as from a trance when Miss Jarrott, very young and graceful, crossed the lawn and held out her hand.

“Mr. Strange!  I didn’t know you were in town.  My brother never mentioned it.  He’s like that.  He never tells.  If I didn’t guess his thoughts, I shouldn’t know anything.  But I always guess people’s thoughts.  Why do you suppose it is?  I don’t know.  Do you?  When I see people, I can tell what they’re thinking of as well as anything.  I’m like that; but I can’t tell how I do it.  I saw you from over there, and I knew you were thinking about Evelyn.  Now weren’t you?  Oh, you can’t deceive me.  You were thinking of her just as plain—!  Well, now you must come and be introduced.”