There, all unaware of me still, she stood, my essential feminine, the embodiment of the inner thing in life for me—­and moreover an unknown other, a person like myself.

She held a little book in her hand, open as if she were walking along and reading it.  That chanced to be her pose, but indeed she was standing quite still, looking away towards the gray and lichenous shrubbery wall and, as I think now, listening.  Her lips were a little apart, curved to that faint, sweet shadow of a smile.

Section 3

I recall with a vivid precision her queer start when she heard the rustle of my approaching feet, her surprise, her eyes almost of dismay for me.  I could recollect, I believe, every significant word she spoke during our meeting, and most of what I said to her.  At least, it seems I could, though indeed I may deceive myself.  But I will not make the attempt.  We were both too ill-educated to speak our full meanings, we stamped out our feelings with clumsy stereotyped phrases; you who are better taught would fail to catch our intention.  The effect would be inanity.  But our first words I may give you, because though they conveyed nothing to me at the time, afterwards they meant much.

“You, Willie!” she said.

“I have come,” I said—­forgetting in the instant all the elaborate things I had intended to say.  “I thought I would surprise you—­”

“Surprise me?”

“Yes.”

She stared at me for a moment.  I can see her pretty face now as it looked at me—­her impenetrable dear face.  She laughed a queer little laugh and her color went for a moment, and then so soon as she had spoken, came back again.

“Surprise me at what?” she said with a rising note.

I was too intent to explain myself to think of what might lie in that.

“I wanted to tell you,” I said, “that I didn’t mean quite . . . the things I put in my letter.”

Section 4

When I and Nettie had been sixteen we had been just of an age and contemporaries altogether.  Now we were a year and three-quarters older, and she—­her metamorphosis was almost complete, and I was still only at the beginning of a man’s long adolescence.

In an instant she grasped the situation.  The hidden motives of her quick ripened little mind flashed out their intuitive scheme of action.  She treated me with that neat perfection of understanding a young woman has for a boy.

“But how did you come?” she asked.

I told her I had walked.

“Walked!” In an instant she was leading me towards the gardens.  I must be tired.  I must come home with her at once and sit down.  Indeed it was near tea-time (the Stuarts had tea at the old-fashioned hour of five).  Every one would be so surprised to see me.  Fancy walking!  Fancy!  But she supposed a man thought nothing of seventeen miles.  When could I have started!