"What is it, dear?" said Mr. Mavick, looking up a moment, and then down
at the papers.

"Why, about the coachman's baby. I thought perhaps--" She had a paper in
her hand, and advanced towards the table, and then stopped, seeing that
her father was not alone.

Philip rose involuntarily. Mr. Mavick looked up quickly. "Yes,
presently. I've just now got a little business with Mr. Burnett."

It was not an introduction. But for an instant the eyes of the young
people met. It seemed to Philip that it was a recognition. Certainly
the full, sweet eyes were bent on him for the second she stood there,
before turning away and leaving the room. And she looked just as true
and sweet as Philip dreamed she would look at home. He sat in a kind of
maze for the quarter of an hour while Mavick was affixing his signature
and giving some directions. He heard all the directions, and carried
away the papers, but he also carried away something else unknown to the
broker. After all, he found himself reflecting, as he walked down the
avenue, the practice of the law has its good moments!

What was there in this trivial incident that so magnified it in Philip's
mind, day after day? Was it that he began to feel that he had
established a personal relation with Evelyn because she had seen him?
Nothing had really happened. Perhaps she had not heard his name, perhaps
she did not carry the faintest image of him out of the room with her.
Philip had read in romances of love at first sight, and he had personal
experience of it. Commonly, in romances, the woman gives no sign of it,
does not admit it to herself, denies it in her words and in her conduct,