Book Two The Birth of the Butterfly Chapter 7 The Coming of the Lover

He was just as he has always been, but somehow, here in the city, I couldn't help finding him bigger, stronger, more bucolic. His clothes looked coarse. His collar was low for the mode, his gloveless hands were red. There was something almost clerical in his schoolmasterly garb, but his bold dark eyes and short hair aggressively brushed to a standstill, as he used to say, looked anything but ministerial. It was plain that he was a man of sense and spirit, one to be proud of; plain that he was a countryman, too.

I couldn't help seeing his thick shoes any more than I could his hurt face when I was distant and his ardour the moment I grew kind; and I was so ashamed--thinking of his looks and picking flaws, when three months ago I was a country girl myself--that I know--I don't know what I should have done, if Kitty hadn't returned.

I was so relieved to see her, for John has been writing of marriage soon and of a home, in one room if need be; and we have too much to accomplish, with beauty and woman's wit and brain and strength, for that. It is my duty to think for both, if he's too much in love--the dear, absurd fellow! And yet-As soon as he was gone, Kitty jumped up from the drawing table. She was on pins and needles for anxiety, her eyes dancing.