change in ten years? Could it grow brown where it had been black? Could it become glossy instead of dull and oily? Could it take on the signs of natural wave where it had been as straight as a die? Could it grow like fur where it had been so thin? The girl could not solve the problem, but the thought was most startling and brought with it many suggestive possibilities that were most disturbing. Yet gradually out of the darkness she drew a sort of comfort in her dawning enlightenment. Two things she had to go on in her strange premises, he had said he did not write the letters, and his hair was not the same. Who then was he? Her husband now undoubtedly, but who? And if deeds and hair could change so materially, why not spirits? At least he was not the same as she had feared and dreaded. There was so much comfort. And at last she lay down and slept. CHAPTER XIV They were late coming into Washington, for the Special had been sidetracked in the night for several express trains, and the noisy crowd who had kept one another awake till after midnight made up by sleeping far into the morning. Three times did Gordon make the journey three cars front to see if his companion of yesterday were awake and needed anything, but each time found the curtains drawn and still, and each time he went slowly back again to his seat in the crowded day-coach. It was not until the white dome of the capitol, and the tall needle of the monument, were painted soft and vision-like against the sky, reminding one of the pictures of the heavenly city in the story of Pilgrim’s Progress, and faintly suggesting a new and visionary world, that he sought her again, and found her fully ready, standing in the aisle while the porter put up the berth out of the way. Beneath the great brim of her purple hat, where the soft fronds of her plumes trembled with the motion of the train, she lifted sweet eyes to him, as if she were both glad and frightened to see him. And then that ecstasy shot through him again, as he realized suddenly what it would be to have her for his life-companion, to feel her looks of gladness were all for him, and have the right to take all fright away from her. They could only smile at each other for good-morning, for everybody was standing up and being brushed, and pushing here and there for suit-cases and lost umbrellas; and everybody talked loudly, and laughed a great deal, and told how late the train was. Then at last they were there, and could get out and walk silently side by side in the noisy procession through the station to the sidewalk.