After we had been knocking about perhaps a week, we landed one noon at the private pier of the Liscombes to lunch with them. As Sandys and I strolled toward the front of the house, several people, also guests for lunch, were just descending from a long buckboard. At sight of one of them I stopped short inside, though I mechanically continued to walk toward her. I recognized her instantly--the curve of her shoulders, the poise of her head, and her waving jet-black hair to confirm. And without the slightest warning there came tumbling and roaring up in me a torrent of longings, regrets; and I suddenly had a clear understanding of my absorption in this wretched game I had been playing year in and year out with hardly a glance up from the table. That wretched game with its counterfeit stakes; and the more a man wins, the poorer he is. She seemed calm enough as she faced me. Indeed, I was not sure when she had first caught sight of me, or whether she had recognized me, until Mrs. Liscombe began to introduce us. "Oh, yes," she then interrupted, "I remember Senator Sayler very well. We used to live in the same town. We went to the same school." And with a friendly smile she gave me her hand. What did I say? I do not know. But I am sure I gave no sign of the clamor within. I had not cultivated surface-calm all those years in vain. I talked, and she talked--but I saw only her face, splendid fulfilment of the promise of girlhood; I hardly heard her words, so greatly was her voice moving me. It was an unusually deep voice for a woman, sweet and with a curious carrying quality that made it seem stronger than it was. In figure she was delicate, but radiant of life and health--aglow, not ablaze. She was neither tall nor short, and was dressed simply, but in the fashion--I heard the other women discussing her clothes after she left. And she still had the mannerism that was most fascinating to me--she kept her eyes down while she was talking or listening, and raised them now and then with a full, slow look at you. When Mrs. Liscombe asked her to come to dinner the next evening with the people she was visiting, she said: "Unfortunately, I must start for Washington in the morning. I am overhauling my school and building an addition." It had not occurred to me to think where she had come from or how she happened to be there, or of anything in the years since I was last with her. The reminder that she had a school came as a shock--she was so utterly unlike my notion of the head of a school. I think she saw or felt what was in my mind, for she went on, to me: "I've had it six years now--the next will be the seventh." "Do you like it?" I asked. "Don't I look like a happy woman?" "You do," said I, after our eyes had met. "You are."