There he stood, perfectly still, his steady gaze fixed on the lady
opposite, while she in her turn never wavered in her gaze upon him. But
whereas there was something bold in his homage there was a half-shy way
with her. He was facing her squarely, but she looked at him a little
sideways, and a little curiously, in demure dubiousness. One could see that
she was enormously intrigued, but her interest was not expressed by any
movement. In fact neither moved; they remained some twenty yards apart all
the time I observed them: each, I suppose, leaving it to the other--the boy
because he was so young, the girl because she was already woman, and woman
likes to force advances from man.

I never saw a prettier thing than the little lady, with her cool white
skin, and the faintest flush on her cheeks, and her eyes not less dark than
the boy's but lacking the sensitive depths of his.

The odd thing was that, although they were so engrossed each in the other,
both, I observed, looked also at me. It struck me as not the least strange
part of this charming drama that its hero and heroine, while completely
absorbed in their own sympathetic relationship, should be able to turn a
calm survey upon a stranger too. This gift made them the more memorable and
perhaps explains why, for all the rest of the day and at intervals in the
night and morning following, I thought of these young people, speculating
as to how they were getting on; and perhaps that is why, the next
afternoon, drawn by invisible wires, I found myself in the National Gallery
again.

Will you believe it?--they also were there. This is an absolute fact. There
they were, exactly as I had left them. And yet, not exactly, for I am
certain that there was a hint more of seriousness in the lady's glance and