The noisy alarum told him he floundered in quags, like a silly creature chasing a marsh-lamp.

But was it so?
Was it not, on the contrary, a serious pursuit of the secret of a woman's character ?--Oh, a woman and her character! Ordinary women and their characters might set to work to get what relationship and likeness they could.

They had no secret to allure.

This one had: she had the secret of lake waters under rock, unfathomable in limpidness.
He could not think of her without shooting at nature, and nature's very sweetest and subtlest, for comparison.

As to her sex, his active man's contempt of the petticoated secret attractive to boys and graylings, made him believe that in her he hunted the mind and the spirit: perchance a double mind, a twilighted spirit; but not a mere woman.
She bore no resemblance to the bundle of women.