Even the reason of this unwillingness he could not at once lay his hand upon, but he felt about his mind far it, and knew that it circled round and round the memory of the sea-maid's face.
That fresh oval face, surrounded with wet curls, crowned with its fantastic wreath of glistening weed--it was not alone because of its fresh girlish prettiness that he could not endure to make it the talk of the country, but because, strange as it seemed to him to admit it, the face was to him like the window of a lovely soul.

It was true that she had laughed and played; it was true that she was, or pretended to be, half a fish; but, for all that, he would as soon have held up to derision his mother, he would as soon have derided all that he held to be most worthy in woman and all that he held to be beautiful and sacred in ideal, as have done despite to the face that looked at him out of the waves that afternoon.

His memory held this face before him, held it lovingly, reverently, and his lips shut firmly over the tale of wonder he might have told.
At the gate of one of the fields a girl stood waiting for him.

It was his cousin Mabel, and when he saw her he knew that she must have come to pay them a visit, and he knew too that she must have come because he was at home.

He was not attached to his cousin, who was an ordinary young person, but hitherto he had always rather enjoyed her society, because he knew that it was her private ambition to marry him.