So Annie remained where she was,
much, I must confess, to her inward content.
The youth and the maiden met every day???-the youth unembarrassed, and
the maiden reserved and shy, even to the satisfaction of the mother.
But if Alec could have seen the loving thoughts which, like threads of
heavenly gold (for all the gold of heaven is invisible), wrought
themselves into the garments she made for him, I do not think _he_
could have helped falling in love with her, although most men, I fear,
would only have fallen the more in love with themselves, and cared the
less for her. But he did not see them, or hear the divine measures to
which her needle flew, as she laboured to arm him against the cold of
those regions
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things.
Alec's college-life had interposed a gulf between him and his previous
history. But his approaching departure into places unknown and a life
untried, operated upon his spiritual condition like the approach of
death; and he must strengthen again all the old bonds which had been
stretched thin by time and absence; he must make righteous atonement
for the wrong of neglect; in short, he must set his inward house in
order, ere he went forth to the abodes of ice.
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