She had exerted no wiles, but she could not be illusive, and the obvious qualities of Dinah which had appealed to Johnny's first love had also, for different reasons, overwhelmed Maynard. Many men by these very qualities in her would have been repulsed. Experienced men might have missed those elements in Dinah that, for them, make a woman most provocative and desirable; but in the case of this man, his own experience of life and his personal adventure combined to intensify the charm that her peculiar nature possessed. He had known nothing like her; she contrasted at almost every possible point with what he had known; she shone for him as an exemplar of all that was most desirable in feminine character. He could not believe that there were many such women, and he doubted not that he would never see such another. He had tried to adopt a fatherly attitude to Dinah and, for a considerable time, succeeded. The view he took of her at their first acquaintance, when she was betrothed to John Bamsey, persisted after the breaking of the engagement; but the very breaking of the engagement enlarged this view, and the freedom, that could no longer be denied to her after that event, had improved their knowledge of each other until both learned the same fact. Then Maynard could play a fatherly friendship no more, nor could the figment of an elder brother serve. He loved her and she loved him. A thing he had never considered as possible now complicated a life that for seven years he had striven with all his might to simplify; and the new situation extended far beyond Dinah, for it was calculated to alter his own agreement and undertaking with himself. These covenants had been entered into with himself alone. Circumstances had long ago combined, at a certain period of his early, adult life, to change the entire texture of existence, deflect its proposed purpose and throw down the goal he set out to attain. And with the changes wrought in temporal ambitions had come others. Life thus dammed ceased to flow. His future collapsed and in its place appeared a new purpose, if negation could be called a purpose. That had sufficed, though at a cost of mental corrosion he did not guess; but now it seemed that a closed book was thrown open again and he stood once more facing outlets to life that even implied happiness. His existence for seven years, it appeared, had not been a progression, but a hiatus. Yet he knew, even while he told himself this, that it must be a delusion and a juggle with reality; since no man can for seven years stand still.