* * * * *

That Saturday afternoon, Mary was walking along the sandy road that led
to the village. She had no purpose, except to be alone, and she carried
an old fashion paper which she meant to con. This newly discovered
necessity of beauty was a very serious affair, and since she meant to
devote herself to its study she conceived that these pages should give
tidings from the fountain head.

She did not expect to meet anyone, and she was quite content to spend
that Indian-summer afternoon with her companions of the printed page.
These were beautiful ladies, appareled in the splendid vogues of Paris
and Vienna. There were delightful bits of information concerning some
mysterious thing called the _haute monde_ and likewise pictures that
instructed one how to dress one's hair and adorn the coiffure with
circlets of pearls. Mary's sheer delight in such mysteries was not
marred by any suspicion that the text she devoured told of fashions long
extinct and supplanted by newer edicts.

On the great rock which jutted out from the wooded tangle into the
margin of Lake Forsaken, with lesser sentinel rocks about it, she sat
cross-legged until she glanced up at last to see that the west was
kindling, and that she must start back to the duller realities of home.
She had been interrupted by no break in the silence except the little
forest twitter of birds and now and then the cool splash where a bass
leaped in the lake.

But as she made her way along the twisting road she heard the rattle of
wheels on the rocks and turned to see a vehicle driven by a man who