She had been a good rider ever since
the days when she galloped bareback on Reuben's plough horses to the
pasture, and Gay's eyes warmed to her as she rode ahead of him down the
circular drive, checkered with sunlight. Yet in spite of her prettiness,
which he had never dignified by the name of beauty, he knew that it was
no superficial accident of colour or of feature that had first caught
his fancy and finally ripened his casual interest into love. The charm
was deeper still, and resulted from something far subtler than the
attraction of her girlish freshness--from something vivid yet soft in
her look, which seemed to burn always with a tempered warmth. For need
of a better word he called this something her "soul," though he knew
that he meant, in reality, certain latent possibilities of passion which
appeared at moments to pervade not only her sensitive features, but her
whole body with a flamelike glow and mobility. While he watched her he
remembered his meeting with Blossom, and the marriage to which in some
perfectly inexplicable manner it had led him, but it was not in his
power, even if he had willed it, to conjure up the violence of past
emotions as he could summon back the outlines of the landscape which had
served as their objective background.
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