"Because I am thirty-two," she said to herself, "because I am thirty-two, I was treated like an old lady. The insolence of youth is intolerable!" Then she heard steps upon the flagged walk and, turning, saw the stately, rather somber figure of the man whose conquest she was meditating approaching her. She met him with charming smiles, and little fluttering attentions and, in words soft and hesitating, tried to hide, and yet to express her great joy in his presence. "It is so long--so long--since I saw you! I have felt desolate and, oh, so lonely!" "Lonely! You have had so much pleasant company." "But _you_ never came--not even when I wrote and asked you--did you know how cruel you were? My company was young and thoughtless--no one cared for me--I longed to see your face you never came--I have been very lonely--but _now_! Oh, you cannot tell what a pleasure it is to have someone to talk to who does not regard tennis and golf as the chief end and duty of man," and she smiled and laid her jeweled white hand confidingly on his. [Illustration: "She smiled and laid her jeweled white hand confidingly on his"] He was much astonished, but also greatly touched, by her frankness and evident joy in his presence; and, as any other man would have done, he accepted her gracious kindness without doubt or consideration. Her pretty face, full of sympathetic revelations, and her flattering words went like wine to his head and heart, his eyes dilated with pleasure, and he clasped the hand she had laid upon his own. Its soft warmth, its slight pressure, the tender smile on her lips, the love light in her eyes, were to his starving soul irresistible temptations. But he never thought of these things as temptations; if he had done so, there was in him a Will gigantic enough to have put them behind him. As a man dying of thirst would have seized a glass of cold water, so his soul, famishing for love, took hastily, greedily, the astonishing blessing offered him. Scarcely could he believe in his happiness; yet fast, oh, so fast, he forgot everything before this hour! And when he left Cramer it was with his heart like a spring brimming over with love. Under the sweet strength of the stars he walked home. He felt that he could not meet Mrs. Caird until he had communed with himself in the silence and solitude of the night. His whole life, without his expectation or conscious desire, had been changed. Something wonderful had taken place. He thought he had loved before, but this startling, unforeseen, and unmistakable passion filled him with rapture and a kind of sacred fear. He had in no way sought it. By some Power far above him it had been sent. Yet his beating heart, his strange joy, his firm step, active brain, and glad outlook on life taught him that all the long years of his ascetic rejection of love must have been a mistake.