had had a
trifle more personal vanity, and had seen how this pale young
girl--forbidden by a suspicious father much companionship with
gallants--had forgotten all difference of station and purse, and had
looked upon him, nobly made, handsome, gay, knowing far more than she did,
much as upon a young god just alighted by her side a moment,--if Andrew
had been aware of this, and had found any words in which to repeat it,
then Louie might have had something to startle her out of her blessedness,
and pain might have come to her all the sooner. But since the pain would
have been as sharp then as at any future time, it was a pitying, pleasant
Fate that let her have her happiness as long as might be. For Louie's love
was a different thing from the selfish passion that any clown may feel:
she had been happy enough in her little round of commonplace satisfactions
and tasks before Andrew came and shed over her this great cloud of
delight--happy then just in the enjoyment of that secret love of hers that
went out and sought him every night sailing over foreign sunlit waters,
and hovered like a blessing round his head; and now that he had come and
folded her about and about with such warm devotion, it was not for the new
happiness he gave her that she loved him, but in order to make his own
happiness a perfect thing; and if her heart's blood had been needed for
that, it would have been poured out like water. The pale-faced Frarnie--if
question could be of her--might never know such love as that: love with
her could be a sentiment, a lover one who added to her pleasure, but a
sacrifice on her part for that lover would have been something to tell and
sing for ever, if indeed it were possible that such a thing should be made
at all.

So day by day the spell deepened with Louie, and for another week there
was delightful loneliness with this lover of hers--strolls down through
the swampy woods hunting for moss to frame the prints he had brought home
uninjured, and which were to be part of the furnishing of their future
home; others across the salt meadows for the little red samphire stems to
pickle; sails in the float down river and in the creeks, where the tall
thatch parted by the prow rustled almost overhead, and the gulls came
flying and piping around them: here and there, they two alone, pouring out
thought and soul to each other, and every now and then glancing shyly at
those days, that did not seem so very far away, when they shou