When I heard that Peter Austin was in Vancouver I hunted him up. I had met Peter ten years before when I had gone east to visit my father's people and had spent a few weeks with an uncle in Croyden. The Austins lived across the street from Uncle Tom, and Peter and I had struck up a friendship, although he was a hobbledehoy of awkward sixteen and I, at twenty-two, was older and wiser and more dignified¹ than I've ever been since or ever expect to be again. Peter was a jolly little round freckled² chap. He was all right when no girls were around; when they were he retired³ within himself like a misanthropic⁴ oyster⁵, and was about as interesting. This was the one point upon which we always disagreed. Peter couldn't endure girls; I was devoted⁶ to them by the wholesale⁷. The Croyden girls were pretty and vivacious⁸. I had a score of flirtations during my brief sojourn¹⁰ among them.

 

But when I went away the face I carried in my memory was not that of any girl with whom I had walked and driven and played the game of hearts.

 

It was ten years ago, but I had never been quite able to forget that girl's face. Yet I had seen it but once and then only for a moment. I had gone for a solitary¹² ramble¹³ in the woods over the river and, in a lonely little valley dim with pines, where I thought myself alone, I had come suddenly upon her,

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