Once on the street, the younger girl hurried on the way the stranger had gone. His face seemed before her.
She could see it; she should always see it. It was the face of a young man. A firm chin, a strong mouth with a feminine curve in it, a face with a clear pallor that seemed foreign somehow. But the eyes—oh, the eyes!
They were deep and brown, and filled with an infinite sadness—for her. She felt it, and the knot of pain in the forehead, that was also for her. Something sweet and terrible went out from his presence. A knowledge of infinite space and infinite time and infinite compassion.
No man had ever looked at her like that. There was something divine in the penetrating power of his eyes.
Some way she knew he was not a priest, though his cloak and turban cap looked like it. He seemed like a scholar from some strange land—a man above passion, a man who knew God.
His eyes accused her and pitied her, while they called her.
No smile, no shrinking of lips into a sneer—nothing but pity and wonder, and something else——
And a voice seemed to say: "You are too good to be there. Follow me."
As she thought of him he seemed to stand on an immeasurable height looking down at her.
She had laughed at him—O God!—she flushed hot with shame from head to foot—but his eyes had not changed. His lips had kept their pitying droop, and his somber eyes had burned deep into the sacred places of her thought, where something sweet and girlish lay, unwasted and untrampled.