In this guise it came to him now--dropped him down from the turbulence of spirit to which it had contributed, caught him up and led him away upon the cloudy paths of the scent it gave him. The fragrance it bore in this its whispering mood stirred, in that quick and certain manner that scents arouse, associations linked with such a fragrance. There was in the scent some hint of the perfume that was always about Dora; and immediately he was carried to thought of her....
She to see him idler! She to pass him by contemptuously! His mental vision presented her before him as clearly as if she were here beside him on the Ridge. He saw her perfect features, with their high, cold expression; the transparent fairness of her skin; that warm shade of colour on either cheek that, as though she saw him watch her, deepened with their strange attraction even as he visioned her. He visioned her clearly. He could have touched her had he stretched a hand. And he was caused--he knew no reason for it--a slight trembling and a slight quickening of his breath.
She to see him idler! ... In rebuke of such a thought he released his mind to wild and undisciplined flights that showed himself the champion of tremendous feats--of arms, of heroism, of physical prowess--performing them beneath the benison of her eyes, returning from them to receive her smiles....
For a considerable space he stood lost among these clouds. They had drifted upon him suddenly. He found them delectable. Then he began to find them strange and puzzling--scenes that were meaningless, sensations that could not be determined. It is to be remembered of him that, though he was now advanced to the period when the sap is up in youth and quickening in his veins, he did not pursue the life nor was he of the nature that encourages the amorous designs. A sluggish habit of mind and body is the soil to nurture these: he was alert and braced, eager and sound from foot to brain--a thing all fibre and fearless, whose only quest was what should give him the challenge of movement, of light, and ring back tough and true when he taxed it. No room was here, then, for the disturbances that sex throws up; and yet these very qualities that such disturbance could not undermine conspired to arouse him very mightily when he should turn him to enquire what this disturbance was, and discovering, should launch himself upon it.