Then speculation died abruptly. She was close to him now, and he recognized her. She was a young woman whom he had seen in the British Museum reading-room a score of times. Her face was entirely familiar to him. Only the other day he had got down for her, from the county-histories shelves, two ponderous volumes which she had seemed unable to manage by herself. She had thanked him with a glance and a pleasant nod. He seemed to recall in that glance a tacit admission that they were old acquaintances by sight. He looked her square in the eye, meanwhile, the inner muscles of his face preparing and holding in readiness a smile in case she gave a sign of remembering him. For a moment it appeared that she was passing without recognition. He had the presence of mind to feel that this was a gross and inexcusable mischance. His feet instinctively poised themselves to follow her, as if it were for this, and this only, that they had tarried so long on the bridge. Before he could take a step, however, she had halted, and, in a wavering fashion, moved sidelong out of the main current of pedestrian-ism. She stood irresolutely by the parapet for a few seconds, with a pretence of being interested in the view of the river and the prim stretch of Parliamentary architecture on its right bank. Then, with a little shrug of decision, she turned to him. “It is a fine morning,” she said. He had stepped to her side, and he bent upon her now the smile which had so nearly gone a-begging. “I was afraid you hadn’t noticed me--and I had quite resolved to go after you.” She flashed inquiry into his face, then let her glance wander vaguely off again. “Oh, I saw you well enough,” she confessed, with a curious intermingling of hesitation and boldness; “but at first I wasn’t going to pretend I did. In fact, I don’t in the least know why I did stop. Or, rather, I _do_ know, but you don’t, and you never will. That is to say, _I_ shan’t tell you!” “Oh, but I do know,” he answered genially. “How should you imagine me so deficient in discernment? Only--only, I think I won’t tell either.” She looked at him again with a kind of startled intentness, and parted her lips as if to speak. He fancied that he caught in this gaze the suggestion of a painful and humbled diffidence. But then she tossed her head with a saucy air and smiled archly. “What a tremendous secret we shall carry to our graves!” she laughed. “Tell me, do you sleep on the bridge? One hears such remarkable stories, you know, about the readers at the Museum.”