'
Jane stood with one hand on the low wall, half-turned to him, hut
her face bent downwards. Regarding her for what seemed a long time,
Sidney felt as though the fragrance of the earth and the flowers
were mingling with his blood and confusing him with emotions. At the
same his tongue was paralysed. Frequently of late he had known a
timidity in Jane's presence, which prevented him from meeting her
eyes, and now this tremor came upon him with painful intensity. He
knew to what his last words had tended; it was with consciousness of
a distinct purpose that he had led the conversation to Clara; but
now he was powerless to speak the words his heart prompted. Of a
sudden he experienced a kind of shame, the result of comparison
between himself and the simple girl who stood before him; she was so
young, and the memory of passions from which he had suffered years
ago affected him with a sense of unworthiness, almost of impurity.
Jane had come to be his ideal of maidenhood, but till this moment he
had not understood the full significance of the feeling with which
he regarded her. He could not transform with a word their relations
to each other.
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