instant a low word of surprise almost leaped from his lips. Hesitating
for a moment in the doorway, her face staring straight into his own,
was the girl whom he had seen through the hotel window!

For perhaps no more than five seconds their eyes met. Yet in that time
there was painted on his memory a picture that Howland knew he would
never forget. His was a nature, because of the ambition imposed on it,
that had never taken more than a casual interest in the form and feature
of women. He had looked on beautiful faces and had admired them in a
cool, dispassionate way, judging them--when he judged at all--as he
might have judged the more material workmanship of his own hands. But
this face that was framed for a few brief moments in the door reached
out to him and stirred an interest within him which was as new as it was
pleasurable. It was a beautiful face. He knew that in a fraction of the
first second. It was not white, as he had first seen it through the
window. The girl's cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted, and she
was breathing quickly, as though from the effect of climbing the stair.
But it was her eyes that sent Howland's blood a little faster through
his veins. They were glorious eyes.

The girl turned from his gaze and seated herself at a table so that he
caught only her profile. The change delighted him. It afforded him
another view of the picture that had appeared to him in the doorway, and
he could study it without being observed in the act, though he was
confident that the girl knew his eyes were on her. He refilled his tiny
cup with tea and smiled when he noticed that she could easily have
seated herself behind one of the screens. From the flush in her cheeks
his eyes traveled critically to the rich glow of the light in her
shining brown hair, which swept half over her ears in thick, soft waves,
caught in a heavy coil low on her neck. Then, for the first time, he