, owing to the
absorption of the party in their different pursuits, he was able to see
more of Ethel than he had ever done. He was so different from the men
she had known that he was a continual study to her. Instead of the
studied indifference, shy avoidance, shy advances, culminating in a
blunt and straightforward declaration of "intentions," which she would
have thought natural in an admirer, followed by transparent, honest
delight in the event of acceptance, or manly submission to the
inevitable in the event of rejection, Captain Kendall had surprised her
by liking her immediately, or at least by showing that he did, and
seeking her persistently, without any pretence of concealment. He talked
to her of politics, of social questions in the broadest sense, of books,
scientific discoveries, his travels, and the travels of others. He read
whole volumes of poetry to her. He discoursed by the hour on the manly
character, its faults, merits, peculiarities, and possibilities, and
then contrasted it with the womanly one, trait for trait, and it seemed
to her that women had never been praised so eloquently,
enthusiastically, copiously. At no time was he in the least choked by
his feelings or at a loss for a fresh word or sentiment. Such romance,
such ideality, such universality, as it were, she had never met. When
his admiration was most unbridled it seemed to be offered to her as the
representative of a sex entirely perfect and lovely. Everything in
heaven and earth, apparently, ministered to his passion and made him
talk all around the beloved subject with a wealth of simile and
suggestion that she had never dreamed of. But, if he gave full
expression to his agitated feelings in these ways, he was extremely
delicate, respectful, reserved, in others. He wrapped up his heart in so
many napkins, indeed, that, being a practical woman not extraordinarily
gifted in the matter of imagination, she frequently lost sight of it
altogether, and she sometimes failed to follow him in a broad road of
sentiment that (like the Western ones which Longfellow has described)
narrowed and narrowed until it disappeared, a mere thread, up a tree. If
he looked long, after one of these flights, at her sweet English face to
see what impression he had made, he was often forced to see that it was
not the one he had meant to make at all.

"Is anything amiss?" she asked once, in her cool, level tone, fixing
upon him her sincerely honest eyes. "Are there