ound in the world at all. But what less perfect could henceforth
touch his heart?

Yet throughout his convalescence he thought often of Adela, perhaps
because she was so near, and because she doubtless often thought of him.
His unexpected meeting with her on Stanbury Hill affected him strangely:
the world was new to his eyes, and the girl's face seemed to share in
the renewal; it was not quite the same face that he had held in memory,
but had a fresh significance. He read in her looks more than formerly he
had been able to see. This impression was strengthened by his interview
with her on the following day. Had she too grown much older in a few
months?

After spending a fortnight with his mother at Agworth, he went to
London, and for a time thought as little of Adela as of any other woman.
New interests claimed him, interests purely intellectual, the stronger
that his mind seemed just aroused from a long sleep. He threw himself
into various studies with more zeal than he had hitherto devoted to
such interests; not that he had as yet any definite projects, but solely
because it was his nature to be in pursuit of some excellence and to
scorn mere acquiescence in a life of every-day colour. He lived all but
in loneliness, and when the change had had time to work upon him his
thoughts began to revert to Adela, to her alone of those who stood on
the other side of the gulf. She came before his eyes as a vision of
purity; it was soothing to picture her face and to think of her
walking in the spring meadows. He thought of her as of a white rose,
dew-besprent, and gently swayed by the sweet air of a sunny morning;
a white rose newly spread, its heart virgin from the hands of shaping
Nature. He could not decide what quality, what absence of thought, made
Adela so distinct to him. Was it perhaps the exquisite delicacy apparent
in all she did or said? Even the most reverent thought seemed gross in
touching her; the mind flitted round about her, kept from contact by a
supreme modesty, which she alone could inspire If her head were painted,
it must be against the tenderest eastern sky; all associations with her
were of the morning, when heatless rays strike level across the moist
earth, of simple devoutness which renders thanks for the blessing of a
new day, of mercy robed like the zenith at dawn.

His study just now was of the early Italians, in art and literature.
There was more of Adela than he perceived in the impulse which gui