He was near to the brink of that launching now. Dora with her rare beauty always had exercised upon him a feeling different from any he commonly knew; he never yet had troubled to suppose that it was caused by any emotion outside his normal life. She had astonished him by her grace of form and feature on that day when he had discovered her to be Snow-White-and-Rose-Red of the fairy book. Thereafter she had remained to him a delicately beautiful object--set apart from the ordinary fashion of persons he knew; not to be treated quite as he treated them; a very dainty thing, making him aware of the contrast that his own sturdy figure, strong limbs, brown face, and hard young hands presented. As a boy he had always been caused a manner of awe in her presence; as he grew older the awe went back to the sheer admiration that she had caused in him at their first meeting. Out of her company, in the long months that frequently separated her visits, he rarely thought of her; though sometimes--and he had no reason for it--he would find her pretty figure in his mind or in his dreams. When he reëncountered her, the admiration sprang afresh; he liked to watch her face, to stand unnoticed and expect, then see, her cold smile part her lips, or those strange shades of colour deepen and glow upon her cheeks; he liked in little unobserved ways to protect her as he had protected her that day in the muddy lane; it caused him a strange rapture to have her thank him for any service. III These were his relations to her through the years. He never had thought to analyse them nor question why he so regarded her--never till now. Now for the first time as he stood on Plowman's Ridge he mused among the misty tangle of the sensations that old friend wind had brought, lost and astray among the visions presented to his mind by estimate of how Dora would consider his idle plight--now for the first time he suddenly questioned himself what she was to him.