paused, listened, believed. . .

It was a mild March day, and he had been loitering on the west-
side docks, looking at faces. He was becoming an expert in
physiognomies: his eagerness no longer made rash darts and
awkward recoils. He knew now the face he needed, as clearly as
if it had come to him in a vision; and not till he found it would
he speak. As he walked eastward through the shabby reeking
streets he had a premonition that he should find it that morning.
Perhaps it was the promise of spring in the air--certainly he
felt calmer than for many days. . .

He turned into Washington Square, struck across it obliquely, and
walked up University Place. Its heterogeneous passers always
allured him--they were less hurried than in Broadway, less
enclosed and classified than in Fifth Avenue. He walked slowly,
watching for his face.

At Union Square he felt a sudden relapse into discouragement,
like a votary who has watched too long for a sign from the altar.
Perhaps, after all, he should never find his face. . . The air
was languid, and he felt tired. He walked between the bald
grass-plots and the twisted trees, making for an empty seat.
Presently he passed a bench on which a girl sat alone, and
something as definite as the twitch of a cord made him stop
before her. He had never dreamed of telling his story to a girl,
had hardly looked at the women's faces as they passed. His case
was man's work: how could a woman help him? But this girl's face
was extraordinary--quiet and wide as a clear evening sky. It
suggested a hundred images of space, distance, mystery, like