at's just it--I couldn't define it. Think--think of rejecting a
creature like that! Why--if he had been mine----"

Celia was not listening. She had taken in hers one of his little
strong, firm, white hands, beautiful in shape, in texture surpassing,
and, quite absorbed in him, pressing it as earnestly as if she entered
into a compact with him, was saying over to him just "Larry ... Larry
..." in her voice itself a communication and a caress.

After a little he wearied of these women, and turned his back upon
them to look at their horse. They became aware of a woman not far from
the carriage-step, clothed in the nondescript dark cotton dress of a
poor farmer's wife, a once bright kerchief around her neck. She was
swart in color, with straight, good features, severer in expression
than were her brown eyes, which suggested possibilities of kindness
when need should arise. She smiled deferentially and said nothing. It
might easily be supposed that English was not her tongue. Miss Havens
fell upon her with questions, which Celia cut short by hurrying their
departure.

But the thought of Larry would not leave her, and it brought
disturbance almost, making her feel, as she had never felt, a
loneliness in her life, an emptiness. The appeal he had made to her
was beyond anything she had imagined of her nature; the sense of him
haunted her, his image passed before her ten times an hour, a heroic
yet divinely innocent little figure, possessing indescribable
affinities with her deepest soul, or, if this were infatuated
imagination, fulfilling at the very least her every taste.

When Miss Havens had left, not before, she returned to see him, alone.
And after that, at intervals growing more frequent, she went, sinking
deeper, as she found, in attachment to this child, instead of
recovering from her unaccountable fancy, as it had seemed not quite
impossible one might.

A drop of bitter it was to her, as when in blowing bubbles one gets a
taste of soapwater, to realize after a time that her interest in Larry
had become a subject of discussion in the village. Even some
perversion of her remark that he looked like a small predestined
Knight of the Grail came back to her ears, with the effect of a
humorous sally. It was almost enough to make one resolve not to see
him any more. Such a thought, however, could be but momentary: her new
love had too strong a hold on her, and she was grown philosophical,
she believed, where village goss