As to the young woman herself, who now turned a somewhat pale face to one side as she left her hand in his, she might have been any one of many thousand others in that city. Her hair was brown, her features regular enough, her complexion nondescript, her garb non-committal. Not a person of ancient lineage, you would have said, or of much education in the world's ways, or of much worldly goods--these things do not always come to a saleswoman of twenty-five, whose salary is six dollars a week. Yet her face had in it now a very sweet sort of womanliness, her mouth a tender droop to it. Her eyes shone with that look which comes to a woman's eyes when first she hears the declaration of man's love--the most glorious and most tragic moment in all a woman's life. The fates ordain which of these it shall be--glory or tragedy. Laura Johnson could not tell, cry in her soul as she might for some forecast shadow from the land of fates to show, visibly, upon the subconscious screen hidden in a girl's heart, the figure of the truth. All this was different from what she had pictured it to be. She had thought that love would come in some tender yet imperious way, that she would know some sudden wave of content and trust and assuredness. There was on her plain, severe face, now a wistfulness that almost glorified it after all. For, indeed, our human loving is most dignified and glorious in what it desires love to be. He leaned again toward her, insistent, frowning, imperious. This was as she had planned. What, then, lacked? If she had sought for some strong man to sweep her from her calm, why was she now so calm? She asked this swiftly, vaguely, wonderingly, demanding to be told by these same fates which had implanted doubt in her heart, whether this was all that she might ever hope, whether this insufficient fashion was the way in which it came to all women--had come, always, to all the women of the world. "You surely do not stop to consider," he renewed. "Why, look at me!" She did look at him, turning about, pushing him away from her that she might, in that one moment of a woman's privilege, look at the being demanding of her her own life. What she saw was not an ill-looking young man of twenty-nine, of rather heavy features, rather a frowning brow, a somewhat prominent light eye, a somewhat pendulous lower lip, abundant darkish hair, abundant confidence in himself. He was tallish, well built, strong, seemed somewhat of a man, yes. And he loved her. At least he had said he did.