"I mean that a woman, in spirit, journeys eternally to the old, old rendezvous with love; makes, with her soul, the eternal pilgrimage back to the spot where Love and she were first acquainted. And, moreover, a woman may even leave the man with whom she is happy to go all alone for a while back to the spot where first she knew happiness because of him. . . . You don't understand, do you?" Brown was a broker. He did _not_ understand. She looked at him, smiling, sighing a little--and, in spite of her fresh and slender youth--and she was certainly not yet twenty--he felt curiously young and crude under the gentle mockery of her unmatched eyes--one hazel-brown, one hazel tinged with grey. Then, still smiling wisely, intimately to herself, she went away into an inner room; and through the doorway he saw her slim young figure moving hither and thither, busy at shelf and cupboard. Presently she came back carrying an old silver tray on which stood a decanter and a plate of curious little cakes. He took it from her and placed it on a tip-table. Then she seated herself on the ancient sofa, and summoned him to a place beside her. "Currant wine," she said laughingly; "and old-fashioned cake. Will you accept--under this roof of mine?" He was dreadfully hungry; the wine was mild and delicious, the crisp cakes heavenly, and he ate and ate in a kind of ecstasy, not perfectly certain what was thrilling him most deeply, the wine or the cakes or this slender maid's fresh young beauty. On one rounded cheek a bar of sunlight lay, gilding the delicate skin and turning the curling strands of hair to coils of fire. He thought to himself, with his mouth a trifle fuller than convention expects, that he would not wish to resist falling in love with a girl like this. _She_ would never have to chase him very far. . . . In fact, he was perfectly ready to be captured and led blushing to the altar. Once, as he munched away, he remembered the miserable fate of his late companion Vance, and shuddered; but, looking around at the young girl beside him, his fascinated eyes became happily enthralled, and matrimony no longer resembled doom. "What are these strange happenings in New York of which I hear vague rumours?" she enquired, folding her hands in her lap and looking innocently at him. His jaw fell. "Have _you_ heard about--what is going on in town?" he asked. "I thought you didn't know." "They say that the women there are ambitious to govern the country and are even resolved to choose their own husbands." "Something of that sort," he muttered uneasily. "That is a very strange condition of affairs," she murmured, brooding eyes remote. "It's a darned sight worse than strange!" he blurted out--then asked pardon for his inelegant vehemence; but she only smiled dreamily and sipped her currant wine in the sunshine.