And so, instead of avoiding Hesper, he sought her the more persistently, and by some means so far wooed her from her reticence as to win her consent to a walk together one autumn afternoon.  How little do we know the measure of our own proposing!  That walk was to be the most fateful his feet had ever trodden through field and wood, yet it seemed the most accidental of gallantries.  A little town-maid, with a romantic passion for ‘us’; it would be interesting to watch the child; it would be like giving her a day’s holiday, so much sunshine ‘in our presence.’  And so on.  But what an entirely different complexion was the whole thing beginning to take before they had walked a mile.  Behind the flippancy one had gone to meet were surely the growing features of a solemnity.  Why, the child was a woman indeed; she could talk, she had brains, ideas—­and, Lord bless us, Theories!  She had that ’excellent thing in woman,’ not only a voice, which she had, too, but character.  Narcissus began to loose his regal robes, and from being merely courteously to be genuinely interested.  Why, she was a discovery!  As they walked on, her genuine delight in the autumnal nature, the real imaginative appeal it had for her, was another surprise.  She had, evidently, a deep poetry in her disposition, rarest of all female endowments.  In a surprisingly few minutes from the beginning of their walk he found himself taking that ‘little child’ with extreme seriousness, and wondering many ‘whethers.’

They walked out again, and yet again, and Narcissus’ first impressions deepened.  He had his theories, too; and, surely, here was the woman!  He was not in love—­at least, not with her, but with her fitness for his theory.

They sat by a solitary woodside, beneath a great elm tree.  The hour was full of magic, for though the sun had set, the smile of her day’s joy with him had not yet faded from the face of earth.  It was the hour vulgarised in drawing-room ballads as the ‘gloaming.’  They sat very near to each other; he held her hand, toying with it; and now and again their eyes met with the look that flutters before flight, that says, ’Dare I give thee all?  Dare I throw my eyes on thine as I would throw myself on thee?’ And then, at last, came the inevitable moment when the eyes of each seem to cry ‘O yes!’ to the other, and the gates fly back; all the hidden light springs forth, the woods swim round, and the lips meet with a strange shock, while the eyes of the spirit close in a lapping dream of great peace.

If you are not ready to play the man, beware of a kiss such as the lips of little Hesper, that never knew to kiss before, pressed upon the mouth of Narcissus.  It sent a chill shudder through him, though it was so sweet, for he could feel her whole life surging behind it; and was the kiss he had given her for it such a kiss as that?  But he had spoken much to her of his ideas of marriage; she knew he was sworn for ever against that.  She must know the kiss