I couldn't afford to do
that. And I've never seen Miss Gordon.''
``Well, she's worth seeing,'' said Jane. ``You'll never see
another like her.''
They rose and watched her advancing. To the usual person,
acutely conscious of self, walking is not easy in such
circumstances. But Selma, who never bothered about herself, came
on with that matchless steady grace which peasant girls often get
through carrying burdens on the head. Jane called out:
``So, you've come, after all.''
Selma smiled gravely. Not until she was within a few feet of the
steps did she answer: ``Yes--but on business.'' She was wearing
the same linen dress. On her head was a sailor hat, beneath the
brim of which her amazingly thick hair stood out in a kind of
defiance. This hat, this further article of Western
civilization's dress, added to the suggestion of the absurdity of
such a person in such clothing. But in her strange Cossack way
she certainly was beautiful--and as healthy and hardy as if she
had never before been away from the high, wind-swept plateaus
where disease is unknown and where nothing is thought of living
to be a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five. Both before and
after the introduction Davy Hull gazed at her with fascinated
curiosity too plainly written upon his long, sallow, serious
face. She, intent upon her mission, ignored him as the arrow
ignores the other birds of the flock in its flight to the one at
which it is aimed.
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