were, to feel the defects of her face. Imogen's nose was too small; neat
rather than beautiful. Her eyes, with the porcelain-like quality of their
white, the jewel-like color of their irises, were over-large; and when
she smiled, which she did often, though with more gentleness than gaiety,
she showed an over-spacious expanse of large white teeth. For the rest,
Imogen's figure was that of the typical well-groomed, well-trained,
American girl, long-limbed, slender, rounded; in her carriage a girlish
air of consciousness; the poise of her broad shoulders and slender hips
expressing at once hygienic and fashionable ideals that reproved slack
gaits and outlines. As they walked, as they talked, watching the slow
advance of the great steamer; as their eyes rested calmly and intelligently
on each other, one could see that the girl's relation to this dear friend
was untouched by any trace of coquetry and that his feeling for her, if
deep, was under most perfect control.

"It's over a year, now, since I saw mama," Imogen was saying, as they
turned again from a long scrutiny of the crowded decks--the distance was as
yet too great for individual recognition. "She didn't come over this summer
as usual,--poor dear, how bitterly she must regret that now, though it was
hardly her fault, papa and I fixed on our Western trip for the summer. It
seems a very long time to me."

"And to me," said Jack. "It's only a year since I came really to know you;
but how much longer it seems than that."

"It's strange that we should know each other so well and yet that you have
never seen my mother," said Imogen. "Is that she? No, she is not so tall.
Poor darling, how tired and sad she must be."

"You are tired and sad, too," said Jack.