in herself an exquisite sense and all-embracing conception of nature,
shared only by her favorite poets and heroes of romance and history.
Hence she was in the common youthful case of being a much better judge
of other people's affairs than of her own. At the fellow-student who
adored some Henry or Augustus, not from the drivelling sentimentality
which the world calls love, but because this particular Henry or
Augustus was a phoenix to whom the laws that govern the relations of
ordinary lads and lasses did not apply, Agatha laughed in her sleeve.
The more she saw of this weakness in her fellows, the more satisfied she
was that, being forewarned, she was also forearmed against an attack of
it on herself, much as if a doctor were to conclude that he could not
catch smallpox because he had seen many cases of it; or as if a master
mariner, knowing that many ships are wrecked in the British channel,
should venture there without a pilot, thinking that he knew its perils
too well to run any risk of them. Yet, as the doctor might hold such
an opinion if he believed himself to be constituted differently from
ordinary men; or the shipmaster adopt such a course under the impression
that his vessel was a star, Agatha found false security in the
subjective difference between her fellows seen from without and herself
known from within. When, for instance, she fell in love with Mr.
Jefferson Smilash (a step upon which she resolved the day after the
storm), her imagination invested the pleasing emotion with a sacredness
which, to her, set it far apart and distinct from the frivolous fancies
of which Henry and Augustus had been the subject, and she the confidant.

"I can look at him quite coolly and dispassionately," she said to
herself. "Though his face has a strange influence that must, I know,
correspond to some unexplained power within me, yet it is not a perfect
face. I have seen many men who are, strictly speaking, far handsomer. If
the light that never was on sea or land is in his eyes, yet they are