Between Whiles by Helen Hunt Jackson

The fountain leaps as if its nearest goal Were sky, and shines as if its life were light. No crystal prism flashes on our sight Such radiant splendor of the rainbow's whole Of color. Who would dream the fountain stole Its tints, and if the sun no more were bright Would instant fade to its own pallid white? Who dream that never higher than the dole Of its own source, its stream may rise? Thus we See often hearts of men that by love's glow Are sudden lighted, lifted till they show All semblances of true nobility; The passion spent, they tire of purity, And sink again to their own levels low!

The next time Willan Blaycke came to the Golden Pear he did not see Victorine. This was by no device of hers, though if she had considered beforehand she could not better have helped on the impression she had made on him than by letting him go away disappointed, having come hoping to see her. She was away on a visit at the home of Pierre Gaspard the miller, whose eldest daughter Annette was Victorine's one friend in the parish. There was an eldest son, also, Pierre second, on whom Mademoiselle Victorine had cast observant glances, and had already thought to herself that "if nothing else turned up -- but there was time enough yet. " Not so thought Pierre, who was madly in love with Victorine, and was so put about by her cold and capricious ways with him that he was fast coming to be good for nothing in the mill or on the farm.