The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (5.1895)

Two Studies

By Mrs. Murray Hickson

I—At the Cross Roads

“For to no man is ft given to understand a woman, nor to
any woman to understand a man.”

The boat from Dieppe had just arrived, and the passengers
were pushing from the decks on to the quay. A tall
woman, wrapped in a handsome mantle trimmed with sables,
waited for her turn to cross the gangway. Her eyes, wandering
restlessly over the little crowd of spectators that had assembled to
watch for the arrival of the boat, met those of a man who pressed
into the throng towards her. She started, and a sudden flush,
beautiful but transitory, touched her face into a youthfulness
which it did not otherwise possess. The man took off his hat
in salute, and, holding it above his head, thrust forward to the
foot of the gangway. He kept his eyes fastened upon her face ;
and the expression of his own, in spite of the smile on his lips,
was doubtful and anxious. She returned his look gravely, yet
with a certain tenderness in her glance. Beckoning to the maid
who followed her, she slipped adroitly before a party of staggering
&ea-s-ick tourists, and made her way on to the quay.

Their