During these few instants, while they exchanged a silent pledge of renewed friendship, Bernard's elastic perception embraced several things besides the consciousness of his own pleasure.

He saw that Gordon looked well and happy, but that he looked older, too, and more serious, more marked by life.

He looked as if something had happened to him--as, in fact, something had.

Bernard saw a latent spark in his friend's eye that seemed to question his own for an impression of Blanche--to question it eagerly, and yet to deprecate judgment.

He saw, too--with the fact made more vivid by Gordon's standing there beside her in his manly sincerity and throwing it into contrast--that Blanche was the same little posturing coquette of a Blanche whom, at Baden, he would have treated it as a broad joke that Gordon Wright should dream of marrying.