Leisurely he got out of the train. She had disappeared. Well—the bright little interlude was over. Still, it would give food for dreams among the ferny woods. The first lines of a little song hummed themselves in his brain—
"Eyes like stars in the night of life,
Seen but a moment and seen for ever."
He would finish them and send them to the Pall Mall Gazette. That would be a guinea.
He wished the journey had been longer. He would never see her again. Perhaps it was just as well. He crushed that last thought. It would be good to dwell through the day on the thought of her—the almost loved, the wholly lost.
"That could but have happened once
And we missed it, lost it for ever!"
Her eyes were very pretty, especially when they opened themselves so widely as she tried to express the thoughts that no one but he had ever cared to hear expressed. The definite biography—dead father, ailing mother—hard work—hard life—hard-won post as High School Mistress, were but as the hoarding on which
