I'd send you a valentine every day of the
year."
As he spoke, he looked at her with burning eyes. He was astonished,
almost terrified by his hardiness; and what he detected of its effect
on her threw him into an indescribable state of emotion.
Rough and coarse he might be, and yet not truly disagreeable to her
fine senses; his freckled face and massive shoulders did not repel
her; no instinct of the lovely princess turned sick at these advances
of the wild man of the woods. Under his scrutiny she showed a sort of
fluttered helplessness, a mingling of beauty and weakness that sent
fiery messages thrilling through and through him, a pale tremor, a
soft glow, a troubled but not offended frown; and from beneath all
these surface manifestations the undeveloped woman in her seemed to
speak to the matured manhood in him--seemed to say without words, "Oh,
dear me, what is this? I hope you haven't taken a real fancy to my
whiteness and slenderness and tremulousness; because if you _have_,
you are so big and so strong that I know you'll get me in the end."
That was the crucial moment of his marvelous life. After that all his
dreams fused and became one. He felt as if from soft metal he had
changed into hard metal.
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