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 almost fortunate, expressed close and deferential sympathy with the eager, vivid soul beside him.

And the interest might well have been unfeigned, for under those smooth gray folds beat a vigorous, determined heart that forty years of denial and monotony could not still nor tame. The soft, calm eyes of this New England spinster had never looked beyond her native town; but in fancy she had voyaged the seas for years, and in her dreams she wandered through strange and wonderful streets of foreign lands and heard the speech of all the peoples of the world. No schoolboy was ever more thirsty for the ends of the earth than she; this little stay-at-home knew all the routes by sea and land, and delighted in the customs of the fortunate dwellers in the places of her lifelong desire.

To-night her hand shook as she laid the coffee-cup aside, and the flush in her cheeks did not die with the sunset. A