Flushed, rapturous, eyes sparkling, cheeks aglow, the small head weaving through the throng like a golden shuttle--ah, did she know how adorable she was! Was Tom right: is it the attainable unattainable to one man and given to some other that leaves a deeper mark upon him than success?
At all events the unattainable was now like a hot sting in the heart, but yet a sting more precious than a balm.

The voice of Brainard Macauley broke in: "A white brow and a long lash, a flushing cheek and a soft eye, a voice that laughs and breaks and ripples in the middle of a word, a girl you could put in your hat, Mr.Harkless--and there you have a strong man prone! But I congratulate you on the manner your subordinates operate the 'Herald' during your absence.

I understand you are making it a daily." Macauley was staring at him quizzically, and Harkless, puzzled, but without resentment of the other's whimsey, could only decide that the editor of the Rouen "Journal" was an exceedingly odd young man.

All at once he found Meredith and the girl herself beside him; they had stopped before the dance was finished.

He had the impulse to guard himself from new blows as a boy throws up his elbow to ward a buffet, and, although he could not ward with his elbow, for his heart was on his sleeve--where he began to believe that Macauley had seen it--he remembered that he could smile with as much intentional mechanism as any wornout rounder of afternoons.