one by one his senses came back to him. He was seated on a low
cushioned bench beneath a group of palms. A young girl was sitting
beside him, but her face was turned away from him.

"I did not catch your name," he was saying. "Would you mind telling
it to me?"

She turned her face towards him. It was the most spiritually
beautiful face he had ever seen. "I am in the same predicament," she
laughed. "You had better write yours on my programme, and I will
write mine on yours."

So they wrote upon each other's programme and exchanged again. The
name she had written was Alice Blatchley.

He had never seen her before, that he could remember. Yet at the back
of his mind there dwelt the haunting knowledge of her. Somewhere long
ago they had met, talked together. Slowly, as one recalls a dream, it
came back to him. In some other life, vague, shadowy, he had married
this woman. For the first few years they had loved each other; then
the gulf had opened between them, widened. Stern, strong voices had
called to him to lay aside his selfish dreams, his boyish ambitions,
to take upon his shoulders the yoke of a great duty. When more than
ever he had demanded sympathy and help, this woman had fallen away
from him. His ideals but irritated her. Only at the cost of daily
bitterness had he been able to resist her endeavours to draw him from
his path. A face--that of a woman with soft eyes, full of
helpfulness, shone through the mist of his dream--the face of a woman
who would one day come to him out of the Future with outstretched
hands that he would yearn to clasp.