“Are you ill?” asked a friend.
“No, not at all. Why?”
“You look like a man who has seen a spirit.”
“Do I? I’m tired, I suppose. Good-night,—good-night, gentlemen,” and he passed out.
“Perhaps I have,” he said as he went down the cold steps into the frozen street.
Floyd went home and tossed about all night. His life was breaking up, he was all at sea. Why had he met her? He was losing the anchor that had held him. “They call her the queen,” the little girl had said. She must be. He had seen her soul through her eyes.
Floyd sent her the poem which contained the line which she had quoted; and she wrote him a note thanking him. It pleased him. It was sympathetic. She invited him to call. He went to see her. She was fine in grain and in look. A closely fitting dark gown ornamented by a single glorious red rose which might have grown where it lay, and her soft hair coiled on her small head, as she entered tall and straight and calm, made Floyd involuntarily say to himself, “Yes”—
“She was right,” he said, half to himself, half aloud, as he stood gazing at her with inquiring eyes after she had greeted him cordially.
“What was right?” she asked.
“Something a little girl said about you.”