Page:Fletcher--Where Highways Cross.djvu/95

 fields, or sat alone through the long evening, "a man of nigh on middle age, content until recently to live as lonely a life as ever a hermit could desire. I knew nothing of women—certainly I never wanted one. In the matter of love they were unknown to me. I never supposed that I should care to think of one in that way. And now here is this woman, whose sorrowful face attracted me to her at first, filling me with a new attraction. She is not a girl, I know she has been married already, and that she may have no more love to give, and yet I have a feeling for her that I never had for anything in my life. That feeling is a feeling of want. I want Her—not some other woman, but Her. I want all of Her—body, soul, mind. And now I know something that I never dreamed of till she came—I shall not be myself, my life will not be full and complete, unless she and I come together in one life."

Hepworth continued this analysis of his own thoughts and feelings for many days, but