It was then that she saw coming toward her a young man--a young man that might have been anywhere from nineteen to thirty-two--with hair that was dark and curly, sorely-shaven olive cheeks just showing the defeated tokens of a blue-black beard; a dapper, prosperous young man, with thick lips and hard eyes and a smartly cut overcoat, from one pocket of which flashed a brilliant-bordered handkerchief. In the instant Mary's exhaustion dropped from her brain and shoulders. She forgot her fright of the earlier evening; she remembered only the sufferings from which it had arisen. Her waiting had not, after all, been vain. She was calm, she was resourceful, she was resolved. "Hello, Max," she said. XXVII JUDGMENT At first he did not know her. He stood there, while their eyes were locked, in his own eyes no gleam of honest memory. He was unchanged--the serene, the secure, the smug Max Grossman of that first meeting in the street of her little Pennsylvania town; but she, as she so well knew without this silent testimony, was not now, and never again could be, the girl of that lost springtime. He looked at her, his thick lips drawn thin in a professional grimace, and not until she spoke a second time did he recognize her. He started then, and his olive face went pale; but Mary put out her hand precisely as if she were meeting, after a brief absence, only an acquaintance of the everyday friendly sort, and Max, too glad for pardon to question motive, seized and squeezed her hand tenderly. "Vhat?" he cried in mock pleasure at this _contretemps_. "No, it _ain'd_! I gan't hardly belief mine eyes you're lookin' so fine. But it _is_ Mary Denbigh!" She smiled almost gayly. In little she had to lie, but in much, though for a reason that he must not suspect, she was indeed exultant. "I am lookin' good, ain't I, Max?" she said. He surveyed her cheap finery; saw her hair, disordered in her passage through the crowded court-room, and turned his gaze quickly from her hollow, painted cheeks, her hardening carmine mouth, and her heavily ringed eyes. "You're _grand_," he said. "I always knew you'd make good, Mary." "You jollier!" she laughed, and with her free hand, patted his olive cheek. "No, it's _hon_est, so help me." "Then don't you want to buy me a drink, Max?" Grossman dropped her hand. His face grew doubtful. "I vish I had _dime_," he said, "but I god to see a friend down the Avenue, an'----" "A lady, Max?" "Ach, no, Mary." "Then let him go. You ought to be glad to take a walk with as good-lookin' a girl as you say I am." For another fleeting instant Max let his eyes rest on her face, then lowered them. He looked at the pavement and drew an awkward line upon it with the edge of his tan boot-sole. More significant than any physical change in her was the fact that she could now embarrass him. "I know, Mary," he stammered; "but, you see, this here feller vhat I tol'----"