Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/136

 escaped collision with a suddenly looming masculine figure. A hasty apology, a startled glance of appeal, a quick breath that parted her lips, and she was past the stranger. But not before she had caught in his eyes a look that quickened her heart, that soothed her angry humility. The sudden sincere admiration, the involuntary tribute to her charm, was new to her, but the instinct of countless generations made it as plain and as much her prerogative as if she had been the most successful débutante. She was not, then, an object of pity, to be treasured for the sake of the old days; other men, too—the impulse outstripped thought, but she caught up with it.

“How dreadful!” she murmured, with a consciousness of undreamed depths in herself. “Of course he is the only one—the only one!” and across the water she begged his forgiveness.

But through all her agony of doubt in the days that followed, one shame was