to him was one of Fate's simpler vagaries; but that now, after five
years, he should find himself beside her nearly two thousand miles from
their first place of meeting was something to think about. First event
and last were links in a closely-welded chain of circumstance. Looking
back, he saw that one had followed the other as logically as night
follows day. By a set of quite natural, unforced incidents Fate had
achieved the amazing.

Wade no longer had any doubt as to the identity of the person who had
looked in upon him through the window yesterday. The marvellous
resemblance to the face he remembered so well, the dropped lilac spray
were in themselves inconclusive, but the evidence of her name made the
case clear and left but one verdict possible. Chance, Fate, Providence,
what you will, had brought them together again.

It would, I realize, add interest to a dull narrative to say that Wade's
heart beat suffocatingly with passionate longing, and that a wild desire
to go to her possessed him. As a matter of fact his heart behaved itself
quite normally and he showed no disposition to leave his chair. He was
chiefly concerned with wondering whether she had recognized him, whether
she even remembered him at all, and, if she did, what she thought of him
for the idiotic way in which he had acted. Oh, he had been sincere
enough at the moment, but, looked at calmly with the austere eyes of
twenty-eight, his behavior on that occasion had been something--well,
_fierce_! He groaned at the thought of it and almost wished that Fate
had let things alone and spared him a second meeting. Of course there
had been extenuating circumstances. She had stepped suddenly into his
vision out of the twilight, a veritable vision of love and romance, and
his heart, a boy's heart, starved and hungry for those things, had taken
fire on the instant. He had--well, he had lost his head, to put it