For a moment—only for a moment—when they were in the turning of the drive, between the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before the lodge became visible, he inclined his face towards her as if—but, no! he thought better of it, and let her go.
Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting’s import she might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and marked and coveted that day by the wrong man, and not by a certain other man, the exact and true one in all respects—as nearly as human mutuality can be exact and true; yet to him at this time she was but a transient impression, half forgotten.
In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say ‘See!’ to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply ‘Here!’ to a body’s cry of ‘Where?’ till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will become corrected by a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social
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