gor--and presently Guy and I were straining every nerve to save
the set. She had a low close serve I remember that seemed perfectly
straightforward and simple, and was very difficult to return.

Sec. 6

All that golden summer on the threshold of my manhood was filled by
Mary. I loved her with the love of a boy and a man. Either I was with
Mary or I was hoping and planning to be with Mary or I was full of some
vivid new impression of her or some enigmatical speech, some pregnant
nothing, some glance or gesture engaged and perplexed my mind. In those
days I slept the profound sweet sleep of youth, but whenever that deep
flow broke towards the shallows, as I sank into it at night and came out
of it at morning, I passed through dreams of Mary to and from a world of
waking thought of her.

There must have been days of friendly intercourse when it seemed we
talked nothings and wandered and meandered among subjects, but always we
had our eyes on one another. And afterwards I would spend long hours in
recalling and analyzing those nothings, questioning their nothingness,
making out of things too submerged and impalpable for the rough drags of
recollection, promises and indications. I would invent ingenious things
to say, things pushing out suddenly from nothingness to extreme
significance. I rehearsed a hundred declarations.

It was easy for us to be very much together. We were very free that
summer and life was all leisure. Lady Ladislaw was busied with her own
concerns; she sometimes went away for two or three days leaving no one
but an attenuated governess with even the shadow of a claim to interfere
with Mary. Moreover she was used to seeing me with her children at
Burnmore; we were still in her eyes no more than children.... And also
perhaps she did not greatly mind if indeed we did a little fall in love
together. To her that may have seemed a very natural and slight and
transitory possibility....

One afternoon of warm shadows in the wood near the red-lacquered Chinese
bridge, we two were alone together and we fell silent. I was trembling
and full of a wild courage. I can feel now the exquisite surmise, the
doubt of that moment. Our eyes met. She looked up at me with an
unwonted touch of fear in her expression and I laid my hands on her. She
did not recoil, she stood mute with her lips pressed together, looking
at me steadfastly. I can feel that moment now as a tremendous
hesitation, blank and yet full of light and