Perhaps there are such things as premonitions. At any rate he had an altogether disproportionate sense of the significance of the afternoon's adventure,—which after all was a very small adventure indeed. A mere¹ talk. His mind refused to leave her, her black furry² slenderness, her dark trustful eyes, the sweet firmness of her perfect lips, her appealing simplicity³ that was yet somehow compatible with the completest self-possession. He went over the incident of the board again and again, scraping his memory for any lurking⁴ crumb⁵ of detail as a starving man might scrape an insufficient⁶ plate. Her dignity, her gracious frank forgiveness; no queen alive in these days could have touched her.... But it wasn't a mere elaborate admiration⁷. There was something about her, about the quality of their meeting.

 

Most people know that sort of intimation. This person, it says, so fine, so brave, so distant still in so many splendid and impressive qualities, is yet in ways as yet undefined and unexplored, subtly and abundantly—for you. It was that made all her novelty and distinction and high quality and beauty so dominating among Mr. Brumley's thoughts. Without that his interest might have been almost entirely⁸—academic. But there was woven all through her the hints of an imaginable alliance, with us, with the things that are Brumley, with all that makes beautiful little cottages and resents advertisements in lovely places, with us as against something over there lurking behind that board, something else, something out of which she came. He vaguely

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