To him this meant all
it would have meant to the lover of a material maiden, to be admitted to
her immediate society.
The sense of her presence in the village imparted to the very air a fine
quality of intoxication. The place was her shrine, and he lived in it as
in a sanctuary.
It was not as if he should have to wait many years, till death, before he
should see her. As soon as he gave place to the later self which was to
succeed him, he should be with her. Already his boyish self had no doubt
greeted her, and she had taken in her arms the baby Paul who had held his
little arms out to her picture twenty years before.
To be in love with the spirit of a girl, however beautiful she might have
been when on earth, would doubtless seem to most young men a very
chimerical sort of passion; but Paul, on the other hand, looked upon the
species of attraction which they called love as scarcely more than a
gross appetite. During his absence from home he had seen no woman's face
that for a moment rivalled Ida's portrait. Shy and fastidious, he had
found no pleasure in ladies' society, and had listened to his classmates'
talk of flirtations and conquests with secret contempt.
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