Beautiful ? Yes , but I thought of that afterward , when I was alone . With that face before my eyes I thought only of its purity and sweetness , of the lovely soul and rich mind looking out of the great , greyish-blue eyes which , in the dimness of the pine shadows , looked almost black . There was something in the face of that child-woman I had never seen before and was destined never to see again in any other face . Careless boy though I was , it stirred me to the deeps . I felt that she must have been waiting forever in that pine valley for me and that , in finding her , I had found all of good that life could offer me . I would have spoken to her , but before I could shape my greeting into words that should not seem rude or presumptuous , she had turned and gone , stepping lightly across the brook and vanishing in the maple copse beyond . For no more than ten seconds had I gazed into her face , and the soul of her , the real woman behind the fair outwardness , had looked back into my eyes ; but I had never been able to forget it . When I returned home I questioned my cousins diplomatically as to who she might be . I felt strangely reluctant to do so -- it seemed in some way sacrilege ; yet only by so doing could I hope to discover her . They could tell me nothing ; nor did I meet her again during the remainder of my stay in Croyden , although I never went anywhere without looking for her , and haunted the pine valley daily , in the hope of seeing her again . My disappointment was so bitter that I laughed at myself . I thought I was a fool to feel thus about a girl I had met for a moment in a chance ramble -- a mere child at that , with her hair still hanging in its long glossy schoolgirl braid . But when I remembered her eyes , my wisdom forgave me . Well , that was ten years ago ; in those ten years the memory had , I must confess , grown dimmer . In our busy western life a man had not much time for sentimental recollections . Yet I had never been able to care for another woman . I wanted to ; I wanted to marry and settle down . I had come to the time of life when a man wearies of drifting and begins to hanker for a calm anchorage in some snug haven of his own . But , somehow , I shirked the matter .
It XXXXX rather easier to let things slide .
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