Let Us Go In Allan

It is very difficult for me to describe the period of time which elapsed
between my arrival at Babyan's Peak and my marriage with Stella. When I
look back on it, it seems sweet as with the odour of flowers, and dim
as with the happy dusk of summer eves, while through the sweetness comes
the sound of Stella's voice, and through the gloom shines the starlight
of her eyes. I think that we loved each other from the first, though for
a while we said no word of love. Day by day I went about the place with
her, accompanied by little Tota and Hendrika only, while she attended
to the thousand and one matters which her father's ever-growing weakness
had laid upon her; or rather, as time drew on, I attended to the
business, and she accompanied me. All day through we were together. Then
after supper, when the night had fallen, we would walk together in the
garden and come at length to hear her father read aloud sometimes from
the works of a poet, sometimes from history. Or, if he did not feel
well, Stella would read, and when this was done, Mr. Carson would
celebrate a short form of prayer, and we would separate till the morning
once more brought our happy hour of meeting.

So the weeks went by, and with every week I grew to know my darling
better. Often, I wonder now, if my fond fancy deceives me, or if indeed
there are women as sweet and dear as she. Was it solitude that had given
such depth and gentleness to her? Was it the long years of communing
with Nature that had endowed her with such peculiar grace, the grace we
find in opening flowers and budding trees? Had she caught that murmuring
voice from the sound of the streams which fall continually about her
rocky home? was it the tenderness of the evening sky beneath which she
loved to walk, that lay like a shadow on her face, and the light of the
evening stars that shone in her quiet eyes? At the least to me she was
the realization of that dream which haunts the sleep of sin-stained men;
so my memory paints her, so I hope to find her when at last the sleep
has rolled away and the fevered dreams are done.