A perilous
solitude, for it lasted long enough to enervate, not long enough
to fortify me. A perilous solitude, for it was followed by
afternoons and evenings spent, day after day and week after week
alone in the society of two women, one of whom possessed all the
accomplishments of grace, wit, and high-breeding, the other all
the charms of beauty, gentleness, and simple truth, that can
purify and subdue the heart of man. Not a day passed, in that
dangerous intimacy of teacher and pupil, in which my hand was not
close to Miss Fairlie's; my cheek, as we bent together over her
sketch-book, almost touching hers. The more attentively she
watched every movement of my brush, the more closely I was
breathing the perfume of her hair, and the warm fragrance of her
breath. It was part of my service to live in the very light of
her eyes--at one time to be bending over her, so close to her
bosom as to tremble at the thought of touching it; at another, to
feel her bending over me, bending so close to see what I was
about, that her voice sank low when she spoke to me, and her
ribbons brushed my cheek in the wind before she could draw them
back.
The evenings which followed the sketching excursions of the
afternoon varied, rather than checked, these innocent, these
inevitable familiarities.
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