She was not beautiful,--a cardinal virtue with him--but
her face often lighted up with something so near akin to beauty
as to leave little cause to regret its absence and the conviction
grew upon him that the spirit enshrined within the graceful and
fragile form was almost perfection itself.
It became clearer to him every day that some deep experience or
sorrow has so thoroughly refined away the dross of her nature as
to make her seem the embodiment of truth and purity. What though
she still maintained complete reticence as to the past, avoiding
in their conversation all allusion to herself, as far as possible;
he still, in his inmost soul, knew he could trust her, and that
while her smiling face, like the sunlit rippling surface of mountain
lakes not far away, might hide dark, silent depths, it concealed
nothing impure.
He also felt that there was no occasion to imagine any deep mystery
to be part of her past history. The facts that she was poor and
orphaned suggested all the explanations needed, and he felt sure
that the sorrows she so sacredly and unselfishly shrouded from the
general view would be frankly revealed to the man who might win
the right to comfort and sustain her.
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