She had forgotten his presence. He was
saying to himself, with something of wonder, "No, she's not
beautiful: but, my God! how _real_ she is!" when, subtly drawn by
the intensity of his gaze, she turned, looked at him with her
clouded eyes, and smiled vaguely. Still smiling, she turned her head
again and gave herself up to listening, unconscious that destiny had
clapped her upon the shoulder.
The man sat quite still. It had come to him with, the suddenness of
a lightning stroke, and his first feeling was one of stunned
amazement, and an almost incredulous resentment. He had gone to and
fro in the earth and walked up and down in it, comfortably immune,
an amused and ironic looker-on. And now, at thirty, without rhyme or
reason he had fallen in love with a red-haired young woman of whom
he knew absolutely nothing, beyond the bare fact that she was Jason
Vandervelde's ward. A woman who didn't conform to any standard he
had ever set for himself, whose mind was a closed book to him, of
whose very existence he had been ignorant until to-night.
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