Late one brilliant April afternoon Professor Lucius Wilson stood at the head of Chestnut Street, looking about him with the pleased air of a man of taste who does not very often get to Boston. Hehad lived there as a student, but for twenty years and more, since he had been Professor ofPhilosophy in a Western university, he had seldom come East except to take a steamer for someforeign port. Wilson was standing quite still, contemplating with a whimsical smile the slantingstreet, with its worn paving, its irregular, gravely colored houses, and the row of naked trees onwhich the thin sunlight was still shining. The gleam of the river at the foot of the hill made him blinka little, not so much because it was too bright as because he found it so pleasant. The few passers-byglanced at him unconcernedly, and even the children who hurried along with their school-bagsunder their arms seemed to find it perfectly natural that a tall brown gentleman should be standingthere, looking up through his glasses at the gray housetops.The sun sank rapidly; the silvery light had faded from the bare boughs and the watery twilight wassetting in when Wilson at last walked down the hill, descending into cooler and cooler depths ofgrayish shadow. His nostril, long unused to it, was quick to detect the smell of wood smoke in theair, blended with the odor of moist spring earth and the saltiness that came up the river with thetide. He crossed Charles Street between jangling street cars and shelving lumber drays, and after amoment of uncertainty wound into Brimmer Street. The street was quiet, deserted, and hung with athin bluish haze. He had already fixed his sharp eye upon the house which he reasoned should be hisobjective point, when he noticed a woman approaching rapidly from the opposite direction. Alwaysan interested observer of women, Wilson would have slackened his pace anywhere to follow thisone with his impersonal, appreciative glance. She was a person of distinction he saw at once, and, moreover, very handsome. She was tall, carried her beautiful head proudly, and moved with ease andcertainty. One immediately took for granted the costly privileges and fine spaces that must lie in thebackground from which such a figure could emerge with this rapid and elegant gait. Wilson notedher dress, too, -for, in his way, he had an eye for such things, -particularly her brown furs and herhat. He got a blurred impression of her fine color, the violets she wore, her white gloves, and, curiously enough, of her veil, as she turned up a flight of steps in front of him and disappe