It was Anne.  It could not be Anne.  Between these two convictions King’s head was whirling.  Whoever it was, she had dared to look straight into his eyes in broad daylight at a distance of not more than four feet.  He had seen into the very depths of her own bewildering beauty, and the encounter, always supposing her to be the person of whom he had thought continuously for four months, was a thing to keep him thinking about her whether he would or no.

“Anything wrong?” asked Burns’s voice in its coolest tones.  “I suspect I was something of an idiot to give you such a big dose of this at the first trial.”

“I’m all right, thank you.”  And King sat up very straight in the car to prove it.  Nevertheless, when he was at home again he was not sorry to be peremptorily ordered to lie supine on his back for at least three hours.

It was not long after this that King was able to bring about the thing he most desired—­a talk with Mrs. Burns.  She came to see him one July day, at his request, at an hour when he knew his mother must be away.  With her he went straight to his point; the moment the first greetings were over and he had been congratulated on his ability to spend a few hours each day at his desk, he began upon the subject uppermost in his thoughts.  He told her the story of his encounter with the girl in the car, and asked her if she thought it could have been Miss Linton.

She looked at him musingly.  “Do you prefer to think it was or was not?” she asked.

“Are you going to answer accordingly?”

“Not at all.  I was wondering which I wanted to think myself.  I wish I had been with you.  I should have known.”

“Would you?” King spoke eagerly.  “Would you mind telling me how?”

“I can’t tell you how.  Of course I came to know her looks much better than you; it really isn’t strange that after seeing her only twice you couldn’t be sure.  I don’t think any change of dress or environment could have hidden her from me.  The question is, of course, why—­if it was she—­she should have chosen not to seem to know you—­unless—­”

“Yes—­”

She looked straight at him.  “Unless—­she is not the poor girl she seemed to be.  And that explanation doesn’t appeal to me.  I have known of poor girls pretending to be rich, but I have never, outside of a sensational novel, known a rich girl to pretend to be poor, unless for a visit to a poor quarter for charitable purposes.  What possible object could there be in a girl’s going about selling books unless she needed to do it?  And she allowed me—­” She stopped, shaking her head.  “No, Jordan, that was not our little friend—­or if it was, she was in that car by some curious chance, not because she belonged there.”

“So you’re going on trusting her?” was King’s abstract of these reflections.  He scanned her closely.

She nodded.  “Until I have stronger proof to the contrary than your looking into a pair of beautiful eyes.  Have you never observed, my friend, how many pairs of beautiful eyes there are in the world?”