Martin, having known the taste of excitement, wanted a second draught; having felt the dignity of power, he loathed to relinquish it. Miss Helstone--that girl he had always called ugly, and whose face was now perpetually before his eyes, by day and by night, in dark and in sunshine--had once come within his sphere. It fretted him to think the visit might never be repeated.
Though a schoolboy he was no ordinary schoolboy; he was destined to grow up an original. At a few years' later date he took great pains to pare and polish himself down to the pattern of the rest of the world, but he never succeeded; an unique stamp marked him always. He now sat idle at his desk in the grammar school, casting about in his mind for the means of adding another chapter to his commenced romance. He did not yet know how many commenced life-romances are doomed never to get beyond the first, or at most the second chapter. His Saturday half-holiday he spent in the wood with his book of fairy legends, and that other unwritten book of his imagination.

Martin, having tasted excitement and power, wanted more. Miss Helstone - that girl he had always called ugly, and whose face was now perpetually before him - had come within his sphere. It fretted him to think the visit might never be repeated.
Martin was no ordinary schoolboy; he was destined to grow up an original. A few years later he took great pains to pare and polish himself down to the pattern of the rest of the world, but he never succeeded. He now cast about in his mind for the means of adding another chapter to his romance. He did not yet know how many life-romances are doomed never to get beyond the first or second chapter.
