Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/242

232 a stranger, and bowed courteously as he passed. Then for the first time I realized what the years had done to my face. But how then should Jim have known me so instantly? A sudden sense of aggrieved pain stole over me. I said to myself: "They would have known me if they had not forgotten my face." As Dominie took his seat, I heard him say to Ally:— "He has not come. It is very strange. I am afraid there is some accident."

I knew then that he had been to the station to meet me. The temptation was very strong to make myself known, but the temptation to study Ally's face for a few hours unobserved was still stronger.

To say that she was the most beautiful human creature I had ever seen seems to desecrate her. Comparison between Ally and other women was impossible. Moment by moment as I looked at her I grew incredulous of my eyes. Was that a girl fourteen years old? Was that the outcast child fostered in a lonely New England village by the village pastor's wife? It was a woman of such superb stature that one half inch more of height would have made her look masculine. It was a woman of such self-poise of manner and bearing—such elegance of dress—that out of America one would have thought her of some royal house. If she had had no beauty, the elegance and the grace of her bearing would have produced the effect of it; but what words can describe the charm