So close had been the bond between himself and Aldous, that the lover's communication of his engagement had evoked in the friend that sense--poignant, inevitable--which in the realm of the affections always waits on something done and finished,--a leaf turned, a chapter closed.

"That sad word, Joy!" Hallin was alone and ill when Raeburn's letter reached him, and through the following day and night he was haunted by Landor's phrase, long familiar and significant to him.

His letter to his friend, and the letter to Miss Boyce for which Raeburn had asked him, had cost him an invalid's contribution of sleep and ease.

The girl's answer had seemed to him constrained and young, though touched here and there with a certain fineness and largeness of phrase, which, if it was to be taken as an index of character, no doubt threw light upon the matter so far as Aldous was concerned.
Her beauty, of which he had heard much, now that he was face to face with it, was certainly striking enough--all the more because of its immaturity, the subtlety and uncertainty of its promise.
_Immaturity_--_uncertainty_--these words returned upon him as he observed her manner with its occasional awkwardness, the awkwardness which goes with power not yet fully explored or mastered by its possessor.

How Aldous hung upon her, following every movement, anticipating every want! After a while Hallin found himself half-inclined to Mr.Boyce's view, that men of Raeburn's type are never seen to advantage in this stage--this queer topsy-turvy stage--of first passion.