Step by step, from tree to tree, with cat-like tread, he came nearer, amused by an almost boyish pleasure in his own skill. Once the lady moved, but she looked in the opposite direction, and then at last, when he was within a dozen yards of her, half-sheltered by a slender stem, she looked straight across toward him, and the light fell upon her face. He knew that she saw him, but he could not have moved from the spot if it had been to save his life, for the lady was Beatrix herself. In spite of a separation that had lasted two years, in spite of her final growth out of early girlhood, he knew that he was not mistaken, and her dark eyes were looking straight into his, telling him that she knew him, too. There was no fear in them, and she showed no surprise, but as she looked, a very lovely smile came into her sad face. He was so glad to see her that he thought little or not at all of her looks. But she was not beautiful in any common sense, and, saving the expression in her face, she could hardly have passed for pretty in the presence of Queen Eleanor and of most of her three hundred ladies. Her forehead was round and full rather than classic, and the thick dark eyebrows were somewhat rough and irregular, turning slightly upwards as they approached each other, a peculiarity which gave an almost pathetic expression to the eyes themselves; the small and by no means perfectly shaped nose was sensitively drawn at the nostrils, but had also an odd look of independence and inquiry; and the wide and shapely lips were more apt to smile with a half-humorous sadness than to part with laughter. Small and well-modelled ears were half covered by dark brown hair that had been almost black in childhood, and which fell to her shoulders in broad waves, in the fashion used by the Queen. While Gilbert looked and remained motionless, the girl rose lightly to her feet, and he saw that she was shorter than he had expected, but slight and delicately made. With one hand he could have lifted her from the ground, with two he could have held her in the air like a child. She was not the Beatrix he remembered, though he had known her instantly; she was not the solemn, black-eyed maiden of whom he sometimes dreamed; she was a being full of individual life and thought, quick, sensitive, perhaps capricious, and charming, if she could charm at all, by a spell that was quite her own. Half-frightened at last by his motionless attitude and his silence, she called him by name. "Gilbert! What is the matter?" He shook his broad shoulders as if waking to consciousness, and the smile in her face was reflected in his own. The voice, at least, had not changed, and the first tones called up the long-cherished record of childish years; for scent and sound can span the wastes of years and the deserts of separation, when sight is dull and even touch is unresponsive.