For him she was from the first compacted of divine mysteries, of exquisite surprises, and he loved to fancy that he could see her genius burning like a clear flame within her and shining at vivid moments with a still soft radiance in her face.

He always thought of her soul as of something luminous, and there were instants when it seemed to touch her eyes and her mouth with an edge of light.

Beyond this her complexities remained for him as on the day when he first saw her--if she was obscure it was the obscurity of a star seen through a fog--and the desire to understand lost itself presently in the bewilderment of his misapprehension.

At last, however, he had put her, as it were, tentatively aside, had relinquished his attempt to reduce her to a formula with the despairing admission that she was, take her as you would, a subtlety that compelled one to a mental effort.

The effort which he had up to this time associated with the society of women had been of anything but a mental character.