Her violet eyes lighted his first love-dreams.

She became his ideal of feminine loveliness, drawing to herself, as the sun draws mist, all the sentiment and dawning passion of the youth.

In a word, he fell in love with her.
Of course he knew now who she had been.

Long before as soon as he was old enough to understand it, this had been explained to him.

But though he was well aware that neither on earth nor in heaven, nor anywhere in the universe, did she any more exist, that knowledge was quite without effect upon the devotion which she had inspired.