That long, clear, grave gaze pierced her heart like a golden poniard.  He was of a thin body and visage, but the effect was of virility, not weakness,—­as if the soul of him, like a blade in a scabbard, had fretted the body fine.  There was a quiet stateliness in his bearing, a simple and unaffected dignity, to which the thick, blue-black hair, the foreign beard, and the aquiline features lent an added touch of distinction.  One was reminded of those dangerously mild and rather sad faces of Spanish soldiers which look at one from Velasquez’s canvases.  This man might wear a ruff and a velvet doublet, or, better yet, a coat of mail, she reflected, instead of the well-cut but rather worn gray tweeds that clothed him.

She was not conscious of her flying hair, or the wind-blown disorder of her skirts.  She was conscious, rather, that for the first time a man was looking at her as from a height, and she was filled with a beautiful astonishment, a sort of divine amazement, as if it were toward this that always, inevitably, she had been moving,—­and now it was here!  Her blood leaped to it, and went racing fierily through her veins, as if there had been poured into it the elixir of life.  She was gloriously conscious of her youth and her womanhood.  A quick and vivid rush of warm blood stained her, brow to bosom.  Her every-day mind was saying, “It is the stranger who’s staying at Grandma Baker’s—­the gentleman who’s been ill.”  But beyond and behind her every-day mind, her heart was shouting, exultant, ecstatic, and very sure:  “It is You!  It is You!”

In quick sympathy with that bright flush of hers the blood showed for an instant in his pale face.  He had been staring at her!  An agitation new to him, an emotion to which all others he had ever experienced were childishly mild, filled him as the resistless sweep of the sea at flood tide fills the shallows of the shores.  Love did not come to him gently and insidiously, but as with the overwhelming rush of great waters.  This, then, must be that “nice, common sort of a woman” staying with the Widow Thatcher, at the other end of the village—­this woman clothed with the sun of her red hair, and with the sea in her eyes!  A smile curved his lips.  His kindling glance played over her like lightning, and said to her:  “I know you.  I have always known you.  Do you not recognize me?  I am I,—­and you are You!”

Had he obeyed his instincts, he would have flung himself before her and clasped her around the knees.  Being a modern gentleman, he had to stand aside, bowing, and let her pass.  She, too, bowed slightly.  She went by with her quick and resilient tread, her cheek royally red.  A wind roared in her ears, her heart beat thickly.