It was just here that he met her.

She was about his own age, and she was walking oddly, as though unconscious of the city all about her, with short picked steps, and her hat with the tilt to it of a girl who knows herself admired.

She had a rose at her breast which she straightened now and then, or smoothed a fold of her dress and hummed as she walked.

Her cheeks were bright even in the dusk, and some strange, quick fear kept pace with her glancing.

Peter was walking heavily himself, as the young do when the dreams have gone out of them, and as they passed in the light of the arc that danced delicately to the wandering air, the girl's look skimmed him like a swallow.