And to himself Burton confessed that to him she was a new relevation of womanhood. At times, out of the nightmare of the past, he would conjure up that face which, in all his wanderings and through all his associations, still hedged his soul about on every side, so that he could follow no emotion far until he met it. He saw her as she rode home on her pony along the pasture path, while the gathering dusk raised the willows very tall about them; he saw her as they sat by the water’s edge that never to-be-forgotten Sunday at the Crossing; he saw her again, half-reclining against a wall, her face drawn as though with pain and yet flushed as in excitement, the flickering light of an uncertain fire falling upon her fine features. He stood her before him and he tried to compare, but he could not compare. It was as though one would compare form with colour, or sound with sight. She was, he knew, everything that was “pure womanly,” but this daughter of the prairie was something more. Although clothed in all the delicacy of her sex, she seemed to hide nothing, to conceal nothing, behind that distinction of nature which has been so grossly misused by convention. At times she spoke to him as a sister might speak; at other times it might have been the voice of his mother; again, she was a child at his feet; but most of all it seemed she spoke as a brother. It was this spirit of comradeship, this attitude of equality, this frankness so sincere that it seemed the only natural thing—the inevitable thing—it was these that drew his soul out to her with the affection of a brother. And yet he marvelled that the face still hedged him about; that every new experience, every new confidence, seemed to paint it still clearer on his mind’s horizon.
The season wore on. Presently the wheat fields were ripe, and Burton found himself so lost in work that thoughts of his past, his present, and his future seemed crowded out of the busy hours. His practical knowledge of farm work and farm machinery, and the genuine personal interest he took in everything that fell to his lot, won for him a regard by the old farmer that was almost paternal. Indeed, more than once Mr. McKay dropped remarks about his advancing years, intimating that he felt the time must soon come when he should place the active management of his affairs in younger hands, and on such occasions Burton felt his heart bound as the thought of a possibility fired his pulses. But then the face rose, calm and thoughtful, and the possibility died away amid the mist of dreams.