personified in this beautiful, graceful girl, at once appreciative and
worthy of appreciation.

Perhaps she appealed most strongly to Howard in her vivid suggestion of the
open air--of health and strength and nature. He had been leading a
cloistered existence and his blood had grown sluggish. She gave him the
sensation that a prisoner gets when he catches a glimpse from his barred
window of the fields and the streams radiating the joy of life and freedom.
And Marian was of his own kind--like the women among whom he had been
brought up. She satisfied his idea of what a "lady" should be, but at the
same time she was none the less a woman to him--a woman to love and to be
loved; to give him sympathy, companionship; to inspire him to overcome his
weaknesses by striving to be worthy of her; to bring into his life that
feminine charm without which a man's life must be cold and cheerless.

He knew that he could not marry her, that he had no right to make love to
her, that it was unwise to go near her again. But he had no power to resist
the temptation. And even in those days he had small regard for the means
when the end was one upon which he had fixed his mind. "Why not take what I
can get?" he thought, as he dreamed of her. "She's engaged--her future
practically settled. Yes, I'll be as happy as she'll let me." And he
resumed his idealising.

At his time of life idealisation is still not a difficult or a long
process. And in this case there was an ample physical basis for it--and far
more of a mental basis than young imagination demands. He took the draught
she so frankly offered him; he added a love potion of his own concocting,
and drank it off.

He was in love.