ind to certain defects of hers, and
quite as certainly they didn't seem to matter in the slightest degree.
Her mind had a curious want of vigour, "flatness" is the only word; she
never seemed to escape from her phrase; her way of thinking, her way of
doing was indecisive; she remained in her attitude, it did not flow out
to easy, confirmatory action.

I saw this quite clearly, and when we walked and talked together I
seemed always trying for animation in her and never finding it. I would
state my ideas. "I know," she would say, "I know."

I talked about myself and she listened wonderfully, but she made no
answering revelations. I talked politics, and she remarked with her blue
eyes wide and earnest: "Every WORD you say seems so just."

I admired her appearance tremendously but--I can only express it by
saying I didn't want to touch her. Her fair hair was always delectably
done. It flowed beautifully over her pretty small ears, and she would
tie its fair coilings with fillets of black or blue velvet that carried
pretty buckles of silver and paste. The light, the faint down on her
brow and cheek was delightful. And it was clear to me that I made her
happy.

My sense of her deficiencies didn't stand in the way of my falling at
last very deeply in love with her. Her very shortcomings seemed to offer
me something....

She stood in my mind for goodness--and for things from which it seemed
to me my hold was slipping.

She seemed to promise a way of escape from the deepening opposition in
me between physical passions and the constructive career, the career
of wide aims and human service, upon which I had embarked. All the time
that I was seeing her as a beautiful, fragile, rather ineffective girl,
I was also seeing her just as consciously as a shining slender figure,
a radiant reconciliation, coming into my darkling disorders of lust and
impulse. I could understand clearly that she was incapable of the most
necessary subtleties of political thought, and yet I could contemplate
praying to her and putting all the intricate troubles of my life at her
feet.

Before the reappearance of Margaret in my world at all an unwonted
disgust with the consequences and quality of my passions had arisen in
my mind. Among other things that moment with the Lettish girl haunted
me persistently. I would see myself again and again sitting amidst those
sluttish surroundings, collar and tie in hand, while her heavy German
words grouped themse