"You were speaking of first impressions of places," he said, while they were still turning the leaves of the picture-book. "Are you a believer in the absolute correctness of first impressions?" "I don't know," was the thoughtful reply; but its after-word was more definite: "As to places, I'm not sure that the first impression always persists; in a few instances I am quite certain it hasn't. I didn't like the Gulf Coast at all, at first; it seemed so foreign and different and unhomelike. As to people, however----" She paused, and Griswold entered the breach hardily. "As to people, you are less easily converted from the original prejudice--or prepossession. So am I. I have learned to place the utmost confidence in the first impression. In my own case it is invariably correct, and if for any reason whatever I suffer any later characterization to take its place, I am always the loser." She was regarding him curiously over the big book which still lay open between them. "Is that a part of the writing gift?" she asked. "No, not specially; most people have it in some more or less workable quantity, though for many it expresses itself only in a vague attraction or repulsion." "I've had that feeling," she answered quickly. "I know," he affirmed. "There have been times when, with every reasonable fibre in you urging you to believe the evil, a still stronger impulse has made you believe in the good." "How can you know that?" she asked; and again he saw in the expressive eyes the flying signals of indeterminate perplexity and apprehension. Resolutely he pressed the hazardous experiment to its logical conclusion. Once for all, he must know if this young woman with the sympathetic voice and the goddess-like pose could, even under suggestion, be led to link up the past with the present. "It is my trade to know," he said quietly, closing the book of views and laying it aside. "There have been moments in your life when you would have given much to be able to decide a question of duty or expediency entirely irrespective of your impressions. Isn't that so?" For one flitting instant he thought he had gone too far. In the hardy determination to win all or lose all, he had been holding her eyes steadily, as the sure mirror in which he should be able to read his sentence, of acquittal or of condemnation. This time there was no mistaking the sudden widening of the pupils to betray the equally sudden awakening of womanly terror. "Don't be afraid," he began, and he had come thus far on the road to open confession when he saw that she was not looking at him; she was looking past him toward one of the windows giving upon the porch. "What is it?" he demanded, turning to look with her. "It was a man--he was looking in at the window!" she returned in low tones. "I thought I saw him once before; but this time I am certain!"