She had occasionally other droll little ways of differing from the family, which were called indulgently "Lydia's notions." Her mother would certainly have thus named this flight out into the early morning. She would have found extravagant, and a little disconcerting, the completeness of Lydia's content in so simple a thing as standing in the first sunshine of an early morning in September, and she would have been unquestionably disturbed, perhaps even a little alarmed, by the beatific expression of Lydia's face as she gazed fixedly up into the sky, the tempered radiance of which was as yet not too bright for her clear gaze. All the restless joy of a few minutes before, which had driven her about from one delight to another, fused under the sun's first warmth into a trance-like quiet. She stood still in the sunshine, a slow flush, like a reflection of dawn, rising to her cheeks, her lips parted, her eyes bright and vacant. An old person coming upon her at this moment would have been painfully moved by that tragic pity which age feels for the unreasoning joy of youth. She looked a child, open-eyed and breathless before the fleeting beauties of a bubble, most iridescent when about to disappear. It was a man by no means old who swung suddenly into sight around the corner, walking swiftly and noiselessly upon the close-cut grass, and the startled expression with which he found himself close to Lydia was by no means one of pity. He fell back a step, and in the instant before the girl was aware of his presence his gaze upon her was that of a man dazzled by an incredible vision. She brought her eyes down to him, and for the space of a breath the expression was hers as well. The sunlight glowing about them seemed the reflection of their faces. Then, for a moment longer, though mutual recognition flashed into their eyes, they did not speak, looking at each other long and seriously. Finally, with a nymph-like stir of all her slender body, Lydia roused herself. "Well, I can speak--can you?" she asked whimsically. "Don't you remember me?" The man drew a long breath and took off his cap, showing close-cropped auburn hair gleaming, like his beard, red in the sun. "You took my breath away!" he exclaimed. "What was the matter with me?" asked Lydia, prettily confident of a compliment to follow. It came in so much less direct a form than she had expected that before she recognized it she had returned it with naive impulsiveness. "I didn't think you could be real," said the man, "you looked so exactly the way this glorious morning made me feel." "Why, that's just how you looked to me!" she cried, and flushed at the significance of her words. Before her confusion the other turned away his quiet gray eyes, and said lightly, "Well, that's because we are the only people in all the world with sense enough to get up so early on a morning like this. I've been out tramping since dawn."