To-day his eyes had followed her everywhere.

He could not have told why it was, but somehow all at once he seemed to deeply realise her--her beauty, the joy of this innocent living intelligence moving through his home.

She had always been necessary to him, but he had taken her presence as a matter of course.

She had always been to him the most wonderful child ever given to comfort an old man's life, but now as he abstractedly took a pinch of snuff from the silver box and then forgot to put it to his nose, he seemed suddenly to get that clearness of sight, that perspective, from which he could see her as she really was.

He took another pinch of snuff, and again forgot to put it to his nose, but brushed imaginary dust from his coat, as was his wont, and whispered to himself: "Why now, why now, I had not thought she was so much a woman.