Thus time passed on.  The little boys began to call themselves young men, and me an old bach; and into this character I contentedly settled down.  My wild oats, of which I had had but scant measure, I considered sown.  My sense of my own ill-looks became morbid.  I hardly looked at a female except my mother, lest she’d think that I “could suppose.”  The old set were mostly married off.  Eleanor married the young sailor.  People spoke of her as being high-tempered, as being extravagant, spending in fine clothes the money he earned at the risk of his life.  I don’t know that it made any difference to my feelings.  It might.  At the time she turned me off, I think I should have married her, knowing she had those faults.  But she removed to the city, and by degrees time and absence wore off the edge of my grief.  My mother lost part of her little property, and I was obliged to exert myself that she might miss none of her accustomed comforts.  She was a good mother, thoughtful and tender, sympathizing not only in my troubles, but in my every-day pursuits, my work, my books, my paintings.

When I was about thirty, Jane Wood came to live near us.  Her mother and young sister came with her.  They rented a small house just across the next field from us.  Although ours, therefore, might have been considered an infected neighborhood, yet I never supposed myself in the slightest danger, because I had had the disease.  Nevertheless, having an abiding sense of my own ugliness, I should not have ventured into the immediate presence of the Woods, except on works of necessity and mercy.

The younger sister was taken very ill with the typhus fever.  It was customary, in our village, for the neighbors, in such cases, to be very helpful.  Mother was with them day and night, and, when she could not go herself, used to send me to see if they wanted anything, for they had no men-folks.

I seldom saw Jane, and when I did, I never looked at her.  I mean, I did not look her full in the face.  It was to her mother that I made all my offers of assistance.

This habit of shunning the society of all young females, and particularly of the Wood girls, was by no means occasioned by any fears in regard to my own safety.  Far from it.  I considered myself as one set apart from all mankind,—­set apart, and fenced in, by my own personal disadvantages.  The thought of my caring for a girl, or of being cared for by a girl, never even occurred to me.  “Taboo,” so far as I was concerned, was written upon them all.  The marriage state I saw from afar off.  Beautiful and bright it looked in the distance, like the Promised Land to true believers.  Some visions I beheld of its beautiful angels walking in shining robes; strains of its sweet melody were sometimes wafted across the distance; but I might never enter there.  It was no land of promise to me.  A gulf, dark and impassable, lay between.  And beside all this, as I have already intimated, I considered myself out of danger.  My life’s lesson had been learned.  I knew it by heart.  What more could be expected of me?