Virginia by Ellen Glasgow — Read

York Street, in which Mrs. Peachey lived and supplied the necessaries of life to a dozen boarders, ran like a frayed seam of gentility between the prosperous and the impoverished quarters of Dinwiddie; and in order to reach it, Oliver was obliged to pass the rectory, where, though he did not see her, Virginia sat in stiffly starched muslin on the old horsehair sofa. The fragrance of honeysuckle floated to his nostrils from the dim garden, but so absorbed was he in the engrossing problems of the moment, that only after he had passed the tower of the church did he remember that the house behind him sheltered the girl who reminded him of one of the adorable young virgins of Perugino. For an instant he permitted himself to dwell longingly on the expression of gentle goodness that looked from her face; but this memory proved so disturbing, that he put it obdurately away from him while he returned to the prudent consideration of the fifty dollars in his pocket.

The appeal of first love had been almost as urgent to him as to Virginia; but the emotion which had visited both alike had affected each differently, and this difference was due to the fundamental distinction between woman, for whom love is the supreme preoccupation of being, and man, to whom it is at best a partial manifestation of energy. To the woman nothing else really mattered; to the man at least a dozen other pursuits mattered very nearly as much.