Yet lo, our race slackening, the moment was even then over, and having
carried us straight as an arrow, the toboggan undulated gracefully like
a serpent over a little rising in the path and came to a stand. She
rose. The light of the rising moon just enabled me to still catch the
threaded yellow of her hair and the translucent complexion.

One had been following us closely. "Permit me--this next is ours, Miss
Grant," he said, hastening eagerly forward to her, and I saw it was
Quinet.

I marked the deference which every one, old and young, paid to her, and
at the house afterwards I looked on while a boisterous knot were
teaching her euchre.

"Change your ace," whispered Annie Lockhart, that pretty gambler.

"But," she replied aloud in her frank, innocent manner, "_Wouldn't that
be wrong?_"

The words came to me with the force of an oracle.

"Let me bow my head," I thought, "My patron! My angel!" and as I looked
upon her, passionate reverence overpowered me.

"What am I that I dare to love you and raise my eyes towards your pure
light? I am not worthy to love you!"

"And you are so beautiful!"

As my meditations were pouring along in this absorbed way, a friend of