He turned by the signpost and saw Susan walking along the lane in front of him with a suit-case swinging from an ungloved hand. The glove and its fellow had been thrust into the pocket of a blue swagger coat. She walked well, and she pleased the eye in the sort of impersonal way that it is pleased by any other agreeable feature of the landscape. A purely surface impression, but definitely pleasant. It was not until a minute or two later that the personal element began to intrude, not with any degree of insistence, but as a vague feeling that he had seen that straight fair hair before. It was very straight except just at the ends, and it was very fair and very thick, and it was cut in a page-boy bob. When nearly every girl you saw had curls all over her head, you were apt to remember the one who hadn’t.

Across a five-year gap he remembered Susan Wayne-seventeen, and a good deal too fat, or at anyrate what she thought was a good deal too fat. He had no rooted objection to curves himself, but the Susan he began to remember had certainly been on the plump side, with apple cheeks, round grey eyes like a kitten’s, and that very thick, very fair bob. Quite a nice child. He lengthened his stride and came up with her. If it wasn’t Susan, he would just go on, but if it was, it would be rather absurd to stalk past her and then run into her again at Emmeline’s.

She looked round at him as he came up, and for a moment he wasn’t quite sure. And then he was-just like that. She wasn’t fat any more, but the eyes were the same, only now that her face was thinner they looked larger, and the lashes had darkened to a golden brown. She probably did something to them, but the effect was good. After all, why go through the world with white eyelashes if you didn’t want to? He frowned, and said in his abruptest manner,