She looked at him in wonder. She had seen picturesque-looking men—dandies, fops—but this was the first time she had ever seen a noble and magnificent-looking man.
"If his soul is like his face," she thought to herself, "he is a hero."
She watched him quite unconsciously, admiration gradually entering her heart.
"I should like to hear him speak," she thought. "I know just what kind of voice ought to go with that face."
It was a dreamy spot, a dreamy hour, and he was all unconscious of her presence. The face she was watching was like some grand, harmonious poem to her; and as she so watched there came to her the memory of the story of Lancelot and Elaine. The restless golden waters, the yellow sands, the cliffs, all faded from her view, and she, with her vivid imagination, saw before her the castle court where Elaine first saw him, lifted her eyes and read his lineaments, and then loved him with a love that was her doom. The face on which she gazed was marked by no great and guilty love—it was the face of Lancelot before his fall, when he shone noblest, purest, and grandest of all King Arthur's knights.
"It was for his face Elaine loved him," thought the girl—"grand and noble as is the face on which the sun shines now."
Then she went through the whole of that marvelous story; she thought of the purity, the delicate grace, the fair loveliness of Elaine, as contrasted with the passionate love which, flung back upon itself, led her to prefer death to life—of that strange, keen, passionate love that so suddenly changed the whole world for the maid of Astolat.
"And I would rather be like her," said the girl to herself; "I would rather die loving the highest and the best than live loving one less worthy."
It had seized her imagination, this beautiful story of a deathless love.
"I too could have done as Elaine did," she thought; "for love cannot come to me wearing the guise it wears to others. I could read the true nobility of a man's soul in his face; I could love him, asking no love in return. I could die so loving him, and believing him greatest and best."