“It was fifteen years, as I have already said, since I had seen her; and I had no other picture of her in my mind than the appearance she had made as a girl, coarsened by time and disappointment.  Why I should have looked for just this sort of change in her, God knows, but I did expect it and probably would not have recognized her if I had passed her in the court.  But I was not worrying about any mistake I might make of this kind.  All I seemed to fear was that at the critical moment some one would pass between us on my side of the gallery.  I never thought of anyone passing in front of her.

“I had picked out Section II as the place where she was to show herself, because it was in a direct line with the course an arrow would take from a sight behind the vase.  I had bade her to look for me in the court, and that would bring her forward to the balustrade in front.  A knot of scarlet ribbon at her breast was to distinguish her.  But the spot I had thus chosen for her, and the spot I had chosen for myself had this disadvantage; that while I could see straight to my mark from the peep-hole I have mentioned, I could see nothing to right or left of that one line of vision.  Why I did not realize the hazard involved in this fact I do not know.  Enough that my whole thought was centered on the lookout I was keeping and it was with a shock of surprise I suddenly saw the whole scene blotted from my view by the passing by of some one on my own side of the gallery.  This must have been the Englishman who found his vantage-point from behind the other pedestal.  He went by quickly, and as the opening cleared once more, I beheld the woman for whom I was waiting appear in the spot selected.  For an instant I was dazzled.  I had not expected to see so noble a figure; and in that instant a cloud came before my eyes, my resolution failed,—­I was almost saved—­she was almost saved—­when instinct got the better of my judgment, and the arrow flew just as that young creature bounded forward in her delight at seeing her steamer admirer watching her from my side of the court.

“The shock of thus beholding a perfect stranger fall under my hand benumbed me, but only for an instant.  In the two weeks of intolerable waiting through which I had just passed, I had so forcibly impressed upon my consciousness the exact course I was to pursue from the instant the arrow left the bow that I went about the same automatically.  Pulling out the edge of the tapestry, I slipped behind it, dropping my bow in the doorway left open for my passage.  This caused me no thought and awakened no fears.  But what took all the nerve I possessed, and gave me in one awful moment a foretaste of the terror and despair awaiting me in days to come, was the opening of the second door—­the one leading into the Curator’s office.

“What might I not be forced to encounter when the knob to this was turned!  Some strolling