He had gossiped and idled and coquetted with beauty before; but this was different, because the nature of the girl was different from all others he had met.

It had mostly been lightly come and lightly go with himself, as with the women it had been easily won and easily loosed.

Conscience had not smitten him hard, because beauty, as he had known it, though often fair and of good report, had bloomed for others before he came.

But here was a nature fresh and unspoiled from the hand of the potter Life.
As her head slightly turned from him again, he involuntarily noticed the pulse beating in her neck, the rise and fall of her bosom.

Life--here was life unpoisoned by one drop of ill thought or light experience.
"Thou dost command men too," he repeated.
She stepped forward a little from the doorway and beyond him, answering back at him: "Oh, no, I only knit, and keep a garden, and command a little home, that's all....