Through the fog that enveloped me I felt her distress and smarted from the
wrong I did so beautiful a creature.

"I--I didn't expect you so soon," the music sighed pleadingly. "I--we
mustn't hurry about--what we used to talk of. New York is so different!--
Oh, but it isn't that! How shall I make you understand?"

"I understand enough," I said dully; "or rather--Great Heavens!--I
understand nothing; nothing but that--you are taking back your promise,
aren't you? Or Helen's promise; whose was it?"

I could not feel as if I were speaking to my sweetheart. The figure before
me wore her pearl-set Kappa key--the badge of her college fraternity; it
wore, too, a trim, dark blue dress--Helen's favourite colour and mine--but
there resemblance seemed to stop.

Confused as I still was by the glory I gazed on, I began painfully
comparing the Nelly I remembered and the Helen I had found. My Helen was
not quite so tall, but at twenty girls grow. She did not sway with the
yielding grace of a young white birch; but she was slim and straight, and
girlish angles round easily to curves. Though I felt a subtle and wondrous
change, I could not trace or track the miracle.

My Helen had blue-gray eyes; this Helen's eyes might, in some lights, be
blue-gray; they seemed of as many tints as the sea. They were dark,
luminous and velvet soft as they watched my struggle. A few minutes
earlier they had been of extraordinary brilliancy.

My Helen had soft brown hair, like and how unlike these fragrant locks