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12 it came to making love the youthful B.A. could find no help in his books. Sober reason insisted that it was neither possible nor even right that he should undertake such a task. And yet, curiously enough, though his book-learning helped him not a whit, he felt strangely drawn towards the little maid and even his erudite mind could not resist her charm.

He saw her in imagination as his future helpmate. Visions of her in various aspects, as his girl-bride, his adored mistress, and the chaste mother of his children, swam before his dreamy eyes. As a painter enthrones in his heart the perfect picture, and a poet the perfect poem, of his imagination, and then lavishes all his devotion on it, so Ramesh enshrined this slip of a girl in his fancy as his heart's delight and the bringer of joy and prosperity to his home.