women chosen for their beauty, their wit, their power to allure, to
fascinate, to intoxicate. He had had his senses appealed to by every
form of attraction a clever woman can fabricate, herself a miracle of
art in dress, in smile, in speech. He had gone from more than one door
with his head swimming, the vivid recollection of the hour just past a
drug more potent than the wine that had touched his lips.

His head was not swimming now, thank heaven, though his pulses were
unquestionably alive. It was the exhilaration of healthy, powerful
attraction, of which his every capacity for judgment approved. He had
not been drugged by the enchantment which is like wine--he had been
stimulated by the charm which is like the feel of the fresh wind upon
the brow. Here was a girl who did not need the background of
artificiality, one who could stand the sunlight on her clear cheek--and
the sunlight on her soul--he knew that, without knowing how he knew. It
was written in her sweet, strong, spirited face, and it was there for
men to read. No man so blind but he can read a face like that.

The darkness had almost fallen when he forced himself to leave the spot.
But--reward for going while yet a trace of dusky light remained--he had
not reached the bottom of the hill road, up which his car had roared an
hour before, when he saw something fallen there which made him pull the
motor up upon its throbbing cylinders. He jumped out and ran to rescue
what had fallen. It was the bunch of rose haws he had so carefully
denuded of thorns, and which she had worn upon her breast for at least a
short time before she lost it. She had not thrown it away intentionally,
he was sure of that. If she had she would not have flung it
contemptuously into the middle of the road for him to see.

He put it into the pocket of his coat, where it made a queer bulge, but