And so, instead of avoiding Hesper, he sought her the more persistently,
and by some means so far wooed her from her reticence as to win her
consent to a walk together one autumn afternoon. How little do we know
the measure of our own proposing! That walk was to be the most fateful
his feet had ever trodden through field and wood, yet it seemed the most
accidental of gallantries. A little town-maid, with a romantic passion
for 'us'; it would be interesting to watch the child; it would be like
giving her a day's holiday, so much sunshine 'in our presence.' And so
on. But what an entirely different complexion was the whole thing
beginning to take before they had walked a mile. Behind the flippancy
one had gone to meet were surely the growing features of a solemnity.
Why, the child was a woman indeed; she could talk, she had brains,
ideas--and, Lord bless us, Theories! She had that 'excellent thing in
woman,' not only a voice, which she had, too, but character. Narcissus
began to loose his regal robes, and from being merely courteously to be
genuinely interested. Why, she was a discovery! As they walked on, her
genuine delight in the autumnal nature, the real imaginative appeal it
had for her, was another surprise. She had, evidently, a deep poetry in
her disposition, rarest of all female endowments. In a surprisingly few
minutes from the beginning of their walk he found himself taking that
'little child' with extreme seriousness, and wondering many 'whethers.
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