such a night, a thousand years ago, had
heard that voice and that song, had listened and been moved by the song,
and the night, just as he was moved now.

He had long known himself for a sentimentalist; he had almost given up
trying to cure himself. And he knew himself for a born lover; he had
always been in love with some one. In his earlier youth his affections
had been so constantly inconstant that he finally came to settle
with his self-respect by recognizing in himself a fine constancy that
worshipped one woman always--it was only the shifting image of her that
changed! Somewhere (he dreamed, whimsically indulgent of the fancy; yet
mocking himself for it) there was a girl whom he had never seen, who
waited till he should come. She was Everything. Until he found her,
he could not help adoring others who possessed little pieces and
suggestions of her--her brilliancy, her courage, her short upper lip,
"like a curled roseleaf," or her dear voice, or her pure profile. He had
no recollection of any lady who had quite her eyes.

He had never passed a lovely stranger on the street, in the old days,
without a thrill of delight and warmth. If he never saw her again, and
the vision only lasted the time it takes a lady to cross the sidewalk
from a shop door to a carriage, he was always a little in love with her,
because she bore about her, somewhere, as did every pretty girl he ever
saw, a suggestion of the far-away divinity. One does not pass lovely
strangers in the streets of Plattville. Miss Briscoe was pretty, but not
at all in the way that Harkless dreamed. For five years the lover in
him that had loved so often had been starved of all but dreams. Only at
twilight and dusk in the summer, when, strolling, he caught sight of a
woman's skirt, far up the village street--half-outlined in the
darkness under the cathedral arch of meeting branches--this romancer
of petticoats could sigh a true lover's sigh, and, if he kept enough
distance between, fly a yearning fancy that his lady wandered there.

Ever since his university days the image of her had been growing
more and more distinct. He had completely settled his mind as to her
appearance and her voice. She was tall, almost too tall, he was sure of
that; and out of his consciousness there had grown a sweet and vivacious
young face that he knew was hers. Her hair was light-brown with gold
lustres (he reveled in the gold lustres, on the proper theory that when
your fancy is pa