carefully, and penciled with such skill, to that same trim
provocative pump and disconcerting flash of silk-clad ankle, Rose
had dash. Hers was that gift of style which is as unmistakable as
the gift of song and which, like it, is sometimes to be found
unexpectedly in any village or small town.

Martin drank in every detail wonderingly, with a kind of awe. All
his life, it seemed to him, for the last thirteen years
positively, he had known that somewhere there must be just such a
woman whose radiance would set his heart beating with the rapture
of this moment and whose moods would blend so easily with his own
that she would seem like a very part of himself. And here she
was, come true, sitting right beside him in his own car. For the
first time in his whole life, Martin understood the meaning of
the word happiness. It gripped and shook him and made his heart
ache with a delicious pain.

"It's hard to believe," he murmured, "such a very small girl went
away and such a very grown up little woman has come back. Let's
see--twenty is it? My, you make me feel old--but you say I
haven't changed much."

"You haven't. A little bit of gray, a number of tiny wrinkles
about your eyes"--the tips of two dainty fingers touched them
lightly--"and you're a bit thinner--that's all. Why you look so
good to me, Uncle Martin, I could fall in love with you myself,
if you weren't auntie's husband."

It was an innocent remark, and he understood it as such, but its
effect on him was dynamic.