we are neighbors in the country."

I suppose I ought to have thought Miss Lammas a very odd girl.
There is, indeed, a sort of freemasonry between people who discover
that they live near each other and that they ought to have known
each other before. But there was a sort of unexpected frankness
and simplicity in the girl's amusing manner which would have struck
anyone else as being singular, to say the least of it. To me,
however, it all seemed natural enough. I had dreamed of her face
too long not to be utterly happy when I met her at last and could
talk to her as much as I pleased. To me, the man of ill luck in
everything, the whole meeting seemed too good to be true. I felt
again that strange sensation of lightness which I had experienced
after I had seen her face in the garden. The great rooms seemed
brighter, life seemed worth living; my sluggish, melancholy blood
ran faster, and filled me with a new sense of strength. I said to
myself that without this woman I was but an imperfect being, but
that with her I could accomplish everything to which I should set
my hand. Like the great Doctor, when he thought he had cheated
Mephistopheles at last, I could have cried aloud to the fleeting
moment, Verweile doch, du bist so schon!

"Are you always gay?" I asked, suddenly. "How happy you must be!"

"The days would sometimes seem very long if I were gloomy," she
answered, thoughtfully. "Yes, I think I find life very pleasant,
and I tell it so."

"How can you 'tell life' anything?" I inquired. "If I could catch
my life and talk to it, I would abuse it prodigiously, I assure