ccent contained a mystery quite distinct from
its obvious import, and not one had ever been pondered by him until
now.

As for Bathsheba, she was not deceived into the belief that Farmer
Boldwood had walked by on business or in idleness. She collected
the probabilities of the case, and concluded that she was herself
responsible for Boldwood's appearance there. It troubled her much
to see what a great flame a little wildfire was likely to kindle.
Bathsheba was no schemer for marriage, nor was she deliberately a
trifler with the affections of men, and a censor's experience on
seeing an actual flirt after observing her would have been a feeling
of surprise that Bathsheba could be so different from such a one,
and yet so like what a flirt is supposed to be.

She resolved never again, by look or by sign, to interrupt the steady
flow of this man's life. But a resolution to avoid an evil is
seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance
impossible.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SHEEP-WASHING--THE OFFER

Boldwood did eventually call upon her. She was not at home. "Of
course not," he murmured. In contemplating Bathsheba as a woman, he
had forgotten the accidents of her position as an agriculturist--that
being as much of a farmer, and as extensive a farmer, as himself,
her probable whereabouts was out-of-doors at this time of the year.
This, and the other oversights Boldwood was guilty of, were natural
to the mood, and still more natural to the circumstances. The
great aids to idealization in love were present here: occasional
observation of her from a distance, and the absence of social
intercourse with her--visual familiarity, oral strangeness. The
smaller human elements were kept out of sight; the pettinesses that
enter so largely into all earthly living and doing were disguised by
the accident of lover and loved-one not being on visiting terms; and
there was hardly awakened a thought in Boldwood that sorry household
realities appertained to her, or that she, like all others, had
moments of commonplace, when to be least plainly seen was to be most
prettily remembered. Thus a mild sort of apotheosis took place
in his fancy, whilst she still lived and breathed within his own
horizon, a troubled creature like himself.

It was the end of May when the farmer determined to be no longer
repulsed by trivialities or distracted by suspense. He had by this
time grown used to being in love; the passio