Her name fell oddly on ears accustomed to the Bessies, Marys, Fannies, Marthas, Louises, Alices, and Graces of Sunbury. It was Cicely--Cicely Hamlin. It was clearly an English name. It proved, at first, difficult to pronounce, and led to joking among the younger set. The girl herself was rather foreign in appearance. Distinctly French some said. She was slimly pretty, with darkish hair and a quick, brisk, almost eager way of speaking and smiling and bobbing her hair. She used her hands, too, more than was common in Sunbury, a point for the adherents of the French theory. The quality that perhaps most attracted young and old alike was her sensitive responsiveness. Sometimes it was nearly timidity. She would listen in her eager way; then talk, all vivacity--head and hands moving, on the brink of a smile-every moment--then seem suddenly to recede a little, as if fearful that she had perhaps said too much, as if a delicate courtesy demanded that she be merely the attentive, kindly listener. She could play and be merry with the younger crowd. But she had read books that few of them had ever heard of. Plainly--though nothing so complex was plain to Henry at this period--she was a girl of delicate nervous organisation, strung a little tightly; a girl who could be stirred to almost naïve enthusiasms and who could perhaps be cruelly hurt. Henry had seen her--once on the hotel veranda talking brightly with Mary Ames, who seemed almost stodgy beside her, once on the Chicago train, once or twice driving with Elberforce Jenkins in his high cart. The sight of her had stirred him. Already he had had to fight thoughts of her--tantalisingly indistinct mental visions--during the late night hours between staring wakefulness and sleep. And it was impossible wholly to escape bitterness over the thought that he hadn't met her. He oughtn't to care. He couldn't admit to himself that it mattered. A couple of years back, in his big days, they would have met all right. First thing. Everybody would have seen to it. They would have told her about him. Now... oh well! He stood in the shadow, out by the carriage entrance, pulling at his moustache. There had been a sort of rushing of the spirit, almost a fervour, in his first determination to face the town bravely. Now for the first time he began to see that the thing couldn't be rushed at. It might take years to build up a new good name--years of slights and sneers, of dull hours and slack nerves. For Henry did know that emotional climaxes pass. He chose a time, between carriages, when the sheltered walk was empty, to move up toward the house. Everybody here was dressed up--'Wearing everything they've got!' he muttered. He himself had on his blue suit and straw hat and carried his bamboo stick. A thick wad of copy paper protruded from a side pocket. A vest pocket bulged with newly sharpened pencils. It had seemed best not to dress. He wasn't a guest; just the representative of a country weekly.