He pushed open the gate with fingers which were almost reverent; he came at last to a halt in the exact spot where he had seen her first.

Perhaps it was at that moment he realised most completely and clearly the curious thing which had come to him--to him of all men, hard-hearted, material, an utter stranger in the world of feminine things.

With a pleasant sense of self-abandonment he groped about, searching for its meaning.

He was a man who liked to understand thoroughly everything he saw and felt, and this new atmosphere in which he found himself was a curious source of excitement to him.

Only he knew that the central figure of it all was this girl, that he had come out here to think about her, and that henceforth she had become to him the standard of those things which were worth having in life.