For twice to-day he had seen her whom he knew to be so far away.
She had gone back to her friends in the north, Tom had said. Twice that
afternoon he had been momentarily, but vividly, conscious of her as a
living presence. As he descended from the car at the station, his eyes,
wandering out over the tumultuous crowd, had caught and held a picture for
a second--a graceful arm upraised, and a gloved hand pressed against a
blushing cheek under a hat such as is not worn in Carlow; a little figure
poised apparently in air, full-length above the crowd about her; so, for
the merest flick of time he had seen her, and then, to his straining eyes,
it was as though she were not. She had vanished. And again, as his
carriage reached the Square, a feeling had come to him that she was near
him; that she was looking at him; that he should see her when the carriage
turned; and in the same instant, above the singing of a multitude, he
heard her voice as if there had been no other and once more his dazzled
eyes beheld her for a second; she was singing, and as she sang she leaned
toward him from on high with the most ineffable look of tenderness and
pride and affection he had ever seen on a woman's face; such a look, he
thought, as she would wear if she came to love some archangel (her love
should be no less) with all of her heart and soul and strength.
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