“But it seems as though I had always known you,” said Franklin, turning again toward the tall figure at the window.  There was no reply to this, neither was there wavering in the attitude of the head whose glossy back was turned to him at that moment.

“It was like some forgotten strain of music!” he blundered on, feeling how hopeless, how distinctly absurd was all his speech.  “I surely must always have known you, somewhere!” His voice took on a plaintive assertiveness which in another he would have derided and have recognised as an admission of defeat.

Mary Ellen still gazed out of the window.  In her mind there was a scene strangely different from this which she beheld.  She recalled the green forests and the yellow farms of Louisburg, the droning bees, the broken flowers and all the details of that sodden, stricken field.  With a shudder there came over her a swift resentment at meeting here, near at hand, one who had had a share in that scene of desolation.

Franklin felt keenly enough that he was at disadvantage, but no man may know what there is in the heart of a girl.  To Mary Ellen there seemed to be three ways open.  She might address this man bitterly, or haughtily, or humorously.  The latter course might have been most deadly of all, had it not been tempered with a certain chivalrousness which abode in Mary Ellen’s heart.  After all, thought she, here was a man who was one of their few acquaintances in this strange, wild country.  It might be that he was not an ill sort of man at heart, and by all means he was less impossible of manner than any other she had seen here.  She had heard that the men of a womanless country were sometimes suddenly disconcerted by the appearance of womankind upon their horizon.  There was a certain quality about this man which, after all, left him distinctly within the classification of gentleman.  Moreover, it would be an ill thing for her to leave a sore heart on the first day of her acquaintance in this town, with which her fortunes were now apparently to be so intimately connected.

Mary Ellen turned at length and seated herself near the window.  The light of which many women are afraid, the cross-light of double windows on the morning after a night of dancing, had no terrors for her.  Her eye was clear, her skin fresh, her shoulders undrooping.  Franklin from his seat opposite gazed eagerly at this glorious young being.  From his standpoint there were but few preliminaries to be carried on.  This was the design, the scheme.  This was what life had had in store for him, and why should he hesitate to enter into possession?  Why should he delay to speak that which was foremost in his soul, which assuredly at that very moment must be the foremost concern in all the interlocking universe of worlds?  After his fashion he had gone straight.  He could not understand the sickening thought that he did not arrive, that his assertion did not convince, that his desire did not impinge.