You gaze, ashamed to gaze; and your heart yearns, ashamed of its yearning.  It is no young girl who is thus testing you:  there is too much pride for that.  A ripeness and maturity rest upon her look and figure that completely fill up that ideal which exaggerated fancies have wrought out of the Grecian heaven.  The vision steals upon you at all hours,—­now rounding its flowing outline to the mellifluous metre of Epic hexameter, and again with its bounding life pulsating with the glorious dashes of tragic verse.

Yet with the exception of stolen glances and secret admiration, you keep aloof.  There is no wish to fathom what seems a happy mystery.  There lies a content in secret obeisance.  Sometimes it shames you, as your mind glows with its fancied dignity; but the heart thrusts in its voice; and, yielding to it, you dream dreams like fond old Boccaccio’s upon the olive-shaded slopes of Italy.  The tongue even is not trusted with the thoughts that are seething within:  they begin and end in the voiceless pulsations of your nature.

After a time—­it seems a long time, but it is in truth a very short time—­you find who she is who is thus entrancing you.  It is done most carelessly.  No creature could imagine that you felt any interest in the accomplished sister—­of your friend Dalton.  Yet it is even she who has thus beguiled you; and she is at least some ten years Dalton’s senior, and by even more years—­your own!

It is singular enough, but it is true, that the affections of that transition state from youth to manliness run toward the types of maturity.  The mind in its reaches toward strength and completeness creates a heart-sympathy—­which in its turn craves fulness.  There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly education, which is disposed to underrate the innocence and unripened judgment of the other sex.  Men see the mistake as they grow older; for the judgment of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by ten years faster than a man’s.

In place of any relentings on such score you are set on fire anew.  The stories of her accomplishments, and of her grace of conversation, absolutely drive you mad.  You watch your occasion for meeting her upon the street.  You wonder if she has any conception of your capacity for mental labor, and if she has any adequate idea of your admiration for Greek poetry, and for herself.

You tie your cravat poet-wise, and wear broad collars turned down, wondering how such disposition may affect her.  Her figure and step become a kind of moving romance to you, drifting forward and outward into that great land of dreams which you call the world.  When you see her walking with others, you pity her, and feel perfectly sure, that, if she had only a hint of that intellectual fervor which in your own mind blazes up at the very thought of her, she would perfectly scorn the stout gentleman who spends his force in tawdry compliments.