A god or goddess forced upon earth and surrounded by mere human beings
would surely feel a desolateness beyond the power of common words to
express, and a human being endowed with powers and physical gifts so rare
as to be out of all keeping with those of its fellows of ordinary build
and mental stature must needs be lonely too.

She had had no companion, because she had found none like herself, and
none with whom she could have aught in common. Anne she had pitied,
being struck by some sense of the unfairness of her lot as compared with
her own. John Oxon had moved her, bringing to her her first knowledge of
buoyant, ardent youth, and blooming strength and beauty; for Dunstanwolde
she had felt gratitude and affection; but than these there had been no
others who even distantly had touched her heart.

The night she had given her promise to Dunstanwolde, and had made her
obeisance before his kinsman as she had met his deep and leonine eye, she
had known that 'twas the only man's eye before which her own would fall
and which held the power to rule her very soul.

She did not think this as a romantic girl would have thought it; it was
revealed to her by a sudden tempestuous leap of her heart, and by a shock
like terror. Here was the man who was of her own build, whose thews and
sinews of mind and body was as powerful as her own--here was he who, had
she met him one short year before, would have revolutionised her world.

In the days of her wifehood when she had read in his noble face something
of that which he endeavoured to command and which to no other was
apparent, the dignity of his self-restraint had but filled her with
tenderness more passionate and grateful.