Don Lane elbowed his way to the edge of the platform. His eye was searching eagerly along the train exits for someone else—someone else whom he longed and yet dreaded to see.
CHAPTER XI
THE NAME OF THE LAW
Don's moody face suddenly lighted up. A young woman was stepping down from one of the cars at the farther end of the train, the porter assisting her to the footstool. Now she was coming steadily along the edge of the platform, carrying in one hand a trim little bag, in the other a trim little umbrella. Now she was looking about, expectant. It was she—Anne!
His heart leaped out to her, his love rose surgingly at sight of her, sweet and beautiful as she seemed, and all so fit for love of man.
A tall young girl she was, who walked with head well up and the suggestion of tennis about her—an indefinable something of chic also about her, as indicative of physical well-being as that suggested by some of the young faces on the magazine covers of the day; which would explain why in her college Anne Oglesby always was known as "the magazine girl." She had straightforward gray eyes, a fine mouth of much sweetness. Above her forehead rose a deep and narrow ruff of dense brown hair, golden brown. Trim, yet well-appointed, she was one of those types whom unhesitatingly we class as aristocrats. A young woman fit for any higher class, qualified for any rank, she seemed—and a creature utterly apart from the crowd that now jostled her on the narrow platform.
Her eyes, too, lighted up at sight of the young man who now hurried forward to meet her, but no unseemly agitation marked her own personal conduct in public. Demure, clean, cool and sweet, all in hand, she did not hasten nor hold back.
Dieudonné Lane had told his mother that never yet had he kissed Anne Oglesby. Now, at sight of her and at the thought that almost at once they must part forever, a great rebellion rose in his heart. He stepped forward swiftly, impulsively, irresistibly.
He caught her quickly in his arms before all the crowd and kissed her—once. It was his great salutation to love—a salutation of great longing—a salutation which meant farewell.