She had her hand impulsively on the door of the partition, when she stopped with a new sense of her impaired dignity.

Could she confess this to her worshipers?
But here the door opened in her very face, and a stranger entered.
He was a man of fifty, compactly and strongly built.

A squarely-cut goatee, slightly streaked with gray, fell straight from his thin-lipped but handsome mouth; his eyes were dark, humorous, yet searching.

But the distinctive quality that struck Mrs Baker was the blending of urban ease with frontier frankness.

He was evidently a man who had seen cities and knew countries as well.