`` It 's really all so beautiful -- but they make it seem silly and absurd , somehow . '' `` You might tell me all about it , Sara , '' I insinuated . `` I would n't tell -- and I 'd understand . '' `` Yes , I think you would , '' she said thoughtfully . `` But I ca n't tell it even to you because I ca n't tell it well enough yet . I 've a feeling that there 's only one way to tell it -- and I do n't know the way yet . Some day I 'll know it -- and then I 'll tell you , Bev . '' Long , long after she kept her word . Forty years later I wrote to her , across the leagues of land and sea that divided us , and told her that Jasper Dale was dead ; and I reminded her of her old promise and asked its fulfilment . In reply she sent me the written love story of Jasper Dale and Alice Reade . Now , when Alice sleeps under the whispering elms of the old Carlisle churchyard , beside the husband of her youth , that story may be given , in all its old-time sweetness , to the world . CHAPTER XXV . THE LOVE STORY OF THE AWKWARD MAN -LRB- Written by the Story Girl -RRB- Jasper Dale lived alone in the old homestead which he had named Golden Milestone . In Carlisle this giving one 's farm a name was looked upon as a piece of affectation ; but if a place must be named why not give it a sensible name with some meaning to it ? Why Golden Milestone , when Pinewood or Hillslope or , if you wanted to be very fanciful , Ivy Lodge , might be had for the taking ? He had lived alone at Golden Milestone since his mother 's death ; he had been twenty then and he was close upon forty now , though he did not look it . But neither could it be said that he looked young ; he had never at any time looked young with common youth ; there had always been something in his appearance that stamped him as different from the ordinary run of men , and , apart from his shyness , built up an intangible , invisible barrier between him and his kind . He had lived all his life in Carlisle ; and all the Carlisle people knew of or about him -- although they thought they knew everything -- was that he was painfully , abnormally shy . He never went anywhere except to church ; he never took part in Carlisle 's simple social life ; even with most men he was distant and reserved ; as for women , he never spoke to or looked at them ; if one spoke to him , even if she were a matronly old mother in Israel , he was at once in an agony of painful blushes . He had no friends in the sense of companions ; to all outward appearance his life was solitary and devoid of any human interest .
He had no housekeeper ; but his old house , furnished as it had been XXXXX his mother 's lifetime , was cleanly and daintily kept .
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