In the Wilderness

w you in the omnibus at the Milan Station over a year ago, I felt your independence."

"Did I manifest it in the omnibus to poor Beattie and my guardian?" she asked, smiling, and in a lighter tone.

"I don't know," he said gravely. "But when I saw you the same evening walking with your sister in the public garden I felt it more strongly. Even the way you held your head and moved--you reminded me of the maidens of the Porch on the Acropolis. I connected you with Greece and all my--my dreams of Greece."

"Perhaps if you hadn't just come from Greece--"

"Wasn't it strange," he said, interrupting her but quite unconscious that he did so, "that almost the first words I heard you speak were about Greece? You were telling your sister abut the Greek divers who come to Portofino to find coral under the sea. I was sitting alone in the garden, and you passed and I heard just a few words. They made me think of the first Greek Island I ever saw, rising out of the sunset as I voyaged from Constantinople to the Pira