Chapter 3

From that day forth, Alan and Herminia met frequently. Alan was
given to sketching, and he sketched a great deal in his idle times
on the common. He translated the cottages from real estate into
poetry. On such occasions, Herminia's walks often led her in the
same direction. For Herminia was frank; she liked the young man,
and, the truth having made her free, she knew no reason why she
should avoid or pretend to avoid his company. She had no fear of
that sordid impersonal goddess who rules Philistia; it mattered not
to her what "people said," or whether or not they said anything
about her. "Aiunt: quid aiunt? aiant," was her motto. Could she
have known to a certainty that her meetings on the common with Alan
Merrick had excited unfavorable comment among the old ladies of
Holmwood, the point would have seemed to her unworthy of an
emancipated soul's consideration. She could estimate at its true
worth the value of all human criticism upon human action.

So, day after day, she met Alan Merrick, half by accident, half by
design, on the slopes of the Holmwood. They talked much together,
for Alan liked her and understood her. His heart went out to her.
Compact of like clay, he knew the meaning of her hopes and
aspirations. Often as he sketched he would look up and wait,
expecting to catch the faint sound of her light step, or see her
lithe figure poised breezy against the sky on the neighboring
ridges. Whenever she drew near, his pulse thrilled at her coming,--
a somewhat unusual experience with Alan Merrick. For Alan, though
a pure soul in his way, and mixed of the finer paste, was not quite
like those best of men, who are, so to speak, born married. A man
with an innate genius for loving and being loved cannot long remain
single. He MUST marry young; or at least, if he does not marry, he
must find a companion, a woman to his heart, a help that is meet
for him. What is commonly called prudence in such concerns is only
another name for vice and cruelty. The purest and best of men
necessarily mate themselves before they are twenty. As a rule, it
is the selfish, the mean, the calculating, who wait, as they say,
"till they can afford to marry." That vile phrase scarcely veils
hidden depths of depravity. A man who is really a man, and who has
a genius for loving, must love from the very first, and must feel
himself surrounded by those who love him. 'Tis the first necessity
of life to him; bread, meat, raiment, a house, an income, rank far
second to that prime want in the good man's economy.

But Alan Merrick, though an excellent fellow in his way, and of
noble fibre, was not quite one of the first, the picked souls of
humanity. He did not count among the finger-posts who point