"I should like to see you for a few minutes at twelve o'clock in the reading-room.
"Yours sincerely,
"ADÈLE VAN HOYT."
I wrote a reply immediately:—
"DEAR MISS VAN HOYT,—
"I regret that I am engaged for the day, and have to leave the hotel in an hour. I shall return about seven o'clock. Could you not dine with me this evening, either in the hotel or elsewhere?
"Yours sincerely,
"J. HARDROSS COURAGE."
Over my breakfast I studied the handwriting of her note. It might indeed have served for an index to so much of her character as had become apparent to me. The crisp, clear formation of the letters, the bold curves and angular terminations, seemed to denote a personality free from all feminine weaknesses. I was reminded at once of the unfaltering gaze of her deep blue eyes, of the chill precision of her words and manner. I asked myself, then, why a character so free, apparently, from all the lovable traits of her sex, should have proved so attractive to me. I had known other beautiful women, I was not untravelled, and I had met women in Paris and Vienna who also possessed the more subtle charms of perfect toilet and manners, and were free from the somewhat hopeless obviousness of most of the women of our country. There was something beneath all that. At the moment, I could not tell what it was. I simply realized that, for the first time, a woman stood easily first in my life, that my whole outlook upon the world was undermined.
Just as I was leaving the hotel, I saw her maid coming down the hall with a note in her hand. I waited, and she accosted me.