So far as he
knew, there was no other man. Her heart was free. What more could
he ask?
On her side, the situation was not so complex. He came from the
great outside world, he brought the outside world to the lonely
little village on the bank of the river. He was bright, amusing,
cultivated,--at least he represented cultivation as it exists in
open places and on the surface of a sea called civilization. He
possessed that ineffable quality known as "manner." The spice of the
Metropolis clung to him. He could talk of the things she loved,--not
as she loved the farm and village and the home of her fathers, but
of the things she loved because they stood for that which represented
the beautiful in intellect, in genius, in accomplishment. The breath
of far lands and wide seas came with him to the town of Windomville,
grateful and soothing, and yet laden with the tang of turmoil, the
spice of iniquity.
Alix was no Puritan. She had been out in the world, she had come
up against the elemental in life, she had learned that God in His
wisdom had peopled the earth with saints and sinners,--and she was
tolerant of both! In a word, she was broad-minded. She had been
an observer rather than a participant in the passing show. She had
absorbed knowledge rather than experience.
The conventions remained unshaken so far as she was personally
concerned.
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