And Jim felt something new, too. He had felt it growing in him ever since he began his school work, and knew not the cause of it. The cause, however, would not have been a mystery to a wise old yogi who might discover the same sort of change in one of his young novices. Jim Irwin had been a sort of ascetic since his boyhood. He had mortified the flesh by hard labor in the fields, and by flagellations of the brain to drive off sleep while he pored over his books in the attic—which was often so hot after a day of summer’s sun on its low thin roof, that he was forced to do his reading in the midmost night. He had looked long on such women as Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Isabel, Cressida, Volumnia, Virginia, Evangeline, Agnes Wickfleld and Fair Rosamond; but on women in the flesh he had gazed as upon trees walking. The aforesaid spiritual director, had this young ascetic been under one, would have foreseen the effects on the psychology of a stout fellow of twenty-eight of freedom from the toil of the fields, and association with a group of young human beings of both sexes. To the novice struggling for emancipation from earthly thoughts, he would have recommended fasting and prayer, and perhaps, a hair shirt. Just what his prescription would have been for a man in Jim’s position is, of course, a question. He would, no doubt, have considered carefully his patient’s symptoms. These were very largely the mental experiences which most boys pass through in their early twenties, save, perhaps that, as in a belated season, the transition from winter to spring was more sudden, and the contrast more violent. Jim was now thrown every day into contact with his fellows. He was no longer a lay monk, but an active member of a very human group. He was becoming more of a boy, with the boys, and still more was he developing into a man with the women. The budding womanhood of Calista Simms and the other girls of his school thrilled him as Helen of Troy or Juliet had never done. This will not seem very strange to the experienced reader, but it astonished the unsophisticated young schoolmaster. The floating hair, the heaving bosom, the rosebud mouth, the starry eye, the fragrant breath, the magnetic hand—all these disturbed the hitherto sedate mind, and filled the brief hours he was accustomed to spend in sleep with strange dreams. And now, as he gazed at Jennie, he was suddenly aware of the fact that, after all, whenever these thoughts and dreams took on individuality, they were only persistent and intensified continuations of his old dreams of her. They had always been dormant in him, since the days they both studied from the same book. He was quite sure, now, that he had never forgotten for a moment, that Jennie was the only girl in the world for him. And possibly he was right about this. It is perfectly certain, however, that for years he had not consciously been in love with her.
Now, however, he arose as from some inner compulsion, and went to her side. He wished that he knew enough of music to turn her sheets for her, but, alas! the notes were meaningless to him. Still scanning him by means of her back hair, Jennie knew that in another moment Jim would lay his hand on her shoulder, or otherwise advance to personal nearness, as he had done the night of his ill-starred speech at the schoolhouse—and she rose in self-defense. Self-defense, however, did not seem to require that he be kept at too great a distance; so she maneuvered him to the sofa, and seated him beside her. Now was the time to line him up.
“It seems good to have you with us to-day,” said she. “We’re such old, old friends.”
“Yes,” repeated Jim, “old friends .... We are, aren’t we, Jennie?”
“And I feel sure,” Jennie went on, “that this marks a new era in our friendship.”
“Why?” asked Jim, after considering the matter.
“Oh! everything is different, now—and getting more different all the time. My new work, and your new work, you know.”
“I should like to think,” said Jim, “that we are beginning over again.”
“Oh, we are, we are, indeed! I am quite sure of it.”
“And yet,” said Jim, “there is no such thing as a new beginning. Everything joins itself to something which went before. There isn’t any seam.”