platform, and as I stood there at the station watching the train
disappear around the curve, White Pigeon reached into the Boston
bag, took out the little book and held it up.

That was the last time I saw White Pigeon. She was looking well and
strong, and her step, I noticed, was firm and sure, and she carried
the crown of her head high and her chin in. It made me carry my chin
in, too, just by force of example, I suppose--so easily are we
influenced. When you walk with some folks you slouch along, but
others there be who make you feel an upward lift and skyey
gravitation--it is very curious!

Yet I do really believe White Pigeon is forty, or awfully close to
it. There are silver streaks among her brown braids, and surely the
peachblow has long gone from her cheek. Then she was awfully tanned
--and that little mole on her forehead, and its mate on her chin,
stand out more than ever, like the freckles on the face of
Alcibiades Roycroft when he has taken on his August russet.

I think White Pigeon must be near forty! That is the second book she
has stolen from me; the other was Max Muller's "Memories"--it was at
the Louvre in Paris, August the Fourteenth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-
five, as we sat on a bench, silent before the "Mona Lisa" of
Leonardo.

This book, "Renaissance Masters," I didn't care much for, anyway. I
got no information from it, yet it gave me a sort o' glow--that is
all--like that lecture which I heard in my boyhood by Wendell
Phillips.