banqueting with Juno, are Egyptian. They have no perspective, no
variety. They have no color, no shading. They are all on a dead level;
they are flat. Now, for you are a man of sense, you are conscious that
those wonderful eyes of Aurelia see straight through all this net-work
of elegant manners in which you have entangled yourself, and that
consciousness is uncomfortable to you. It is another trick in the game
for me, because those eyes do not pry into my fancy. How can they,
since Aurelia does not know of my existence?

Unless, indeed, she should remember the first time I saw her. It was
only last year, in May. I had dined, somewhat hastily, in
consideration of the fine day, and of my confidence that many would be
wending dinnerwards that afternoon. I saw my Prue comfortably engaged
in seating the trowsers of Adoniram, our eldest boy--an economical
care to which my darling Prue is not unequal, even in these days and
in this town--and then hurried toward the avenue. It is never much
thronged at that hour. The moment is sacred to dinner. As I paused at
the corner of Twelfth Street, by the church, you remember, I saw an
apple-woman, from whose stores I determined to finish my dessert,
which had been imperfect at home. But, mindful of meritorious and
economical Prue, I was not the man to pay exorbitant prices for
apples, and while still haggling with the wrinkled Eve who had tempted
me, I became suddenly aware of a carriage approaching, and, indeed,
already close by. I raised my eyes, still munching an apple which I
held in one hand, while the other grasped my walking-stick (true to my
instincts of dinner guests, as young women to a passing wedding or old
ones to a funeral), and beheld Aurelia!

Old in this kind of observation as I am, there was something so
graciously alluring in the look that she cast upon me, as