Lucy Harding by Mary Jane Holmes

I had pictured them as old, or middle-aged, with gray or white hair, hard faces and fierce eyes, which could look through one and see if there was anything concealed. But the tall man, who bowed so deferentially, and hesitated a little before speaking, as if he thought I would not understand, was quite different. He was neither very old nor grizzled, although his heavy beard, which covered the most of his face, was streaked with gray. I could not judge well with regard to his eyes, as the lids were partially closed, the result of some chronic trouble with them, I afterward learned. I knew they were looking at me sharply-so sharply, indeed, that I felt my face growing red with resentment, and, as he continued to scrutinize me, coming close to do so, all my dread of him and his craft vanished, and, with a proud turn of my head, I said: "Why do you stare at me as if you thought me a smuggler, or a nihilist? I am neither."

Instantly there came upon all I could see of his face for the heavy beard and into all I could see of eyes for the drooping lids a smile, which made my brain whirl, and for a moment I asked myself if theosophy were not true, after all, and I had lived another life somewhere, and been in the position in which I now found myself, face to face with a gendarme, who, as the smile disappeared under his heavy mustache, said: "Madame speaks Russian well."