Yet will I love Lalagé, see her sweet smile,
Hear her sweet prattle."
Even as a school-boy he was unable to mingle with lads of his own age. This, doubtless, is another of the precocities of the early-doomed, who feel that every moment of life they have must be lived to the full. A well-known artist, Who was suffering with tuberculosis, once said to me, in describing his working hours at the studio, "I must make every touch tell, and every moment count." So to Stevenson the rounded out sympathies of maturity were more attractive than the sweet prattle of girlhood, because, like the painter, with his paint, he, with his life, had to make every moment count. This, of course, explains his having chosen a woman so much older than himself as a life-companion; a woman in whom he could find a response on his own mental plane.
In the following little poem, which is perhaps his best known tribute to his wife, he embodies in cameo clearness my own early impression of the intrinsic qualities of her character:
"Trusty, dusky, vivid true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honor, anger, valor, fire;