It was a natural part of the half fantastic chivalry of his character that he should have felt a sort of satisfaction in thus for the moment being near Minola, as if by that means he were in some sort protecting her against danger. If at that time any softer and warmer feeling than mere friendship were mingling itself with Heron's sensations, he did not then know it. He thought of the girl as a sweet friend, new to him, indeed, but very dear, in whose happiness he felt deeply interested, and over whom he had taken it into his head that he had a right to watch. She seemed to be strangely alone in the world of London, and, indeed, to be at the same time not suited for anything in London but just such isolation. He never could think of her as mixing in the ordinary society of the metropolis. He could not think of her as one of the common crowd, following out mechanically the registered routine of the season's amusements, listening to the commonplace talk, and compliments, and cheap cynicism of the drawing-room and the five o'clock tea. To him she appeared as different from all that, and as poetically lifted above it, as if she were Hawthorne's Hilda, high up in her Roman tower, among her doves, and near to the blue sky. Except in the home of the Moneys, Heron had never seen Minola in anything that even looked like society; and there was a good deal of the odd and the fresh in that home which took it out of the range of the commonplace, and did not interfere with his poetic idealization of Minola. Her presence and her way of life appeared alike to him a poetic creation. So quiet, self-sufficing a life, alone in the midst of the crowd, such simple strength of purpose, such a tranquil choice of the kind of existence that suited her best, such generosity and such gracious, loving kindness--all this together made up a picture which had a natural fascination for a chivalrous young man, who had never before had time to allow the softer and more romantic elements of his nature any chance of expression. It may be that for the present Minola was to him but the first suggestion of an embodiment of all the vague, floating thoughts and visions of love and womanhood that must now and then cross the spiritual horizon of every young man, no matter how closely he may be occupied with colonial affairs and the condition of the colored races. The hero of a French story, whereof there is not otherwise over-much good to be said, speaks with a feeling as poetic as it is true when he says that in the nightingale's song he heard the story of the love that he ought to have known, but which had not yet come to him. Perhaps in the eyes and in the voice of Minola Victor Heron unconsciously found this story told for him.