reception of him. She was all that was pure and good, a holy of holies
not lightly to be profaned even by what might possibly be the too ardent
reverence of a devotee. She was a being wholly different from any he had
ever known. She was not as other girls. It never entered his head that
she was of the same clay as his own sisters, or anybody's sister. She
was more than mere girl, than mere woman. She was--well, she was
Genevieve, a being of a class by herself, nothing less than a miracle of
creation.

And for her, in turn, there was in him but little less of illusion. Her
judgment of him in minor things might be critical (while his judgment of
her was sheer worship, and had in it nothing critical at all); but in her
judgment of him as a whole she forgot the sum of the parts, and knew him
only as a creature of wonder, who gave meaning to life, and for whom she
could die as willingly as she could live. She often beguiled her waking
dreams of him with fancied situations, wherein, dying for him, she at
last adequately expressed the love she felt for him, and which, living,
she knew she could never fully express.

Their love was all fire and dew. The physical scarcely entered into it,
for such seemed profanation. The ultimate physical facts of their
relation were something which they never considered. Yet the immediate
physical facts they knew, the immediate yearnings and raptures of the
flesh--the touch of finger tips on hand or arm, the momentary pressure of
a hand-clasp, the rare lip-caress of a kiss, the tingling thrill of her
hair upon his cheek, of her hand lightly thrusting back the locks from
above his eyes. All this they knew, but also, and they knew not why,
there seemed a hint of sin about these caresses and sweet bodily
contacts.