Book Excerpt: an injured man and a lovely woman, guests of the same summer hotel; a slow recovery; a leisurely sweet acquaintance; the light that never was on hill or shore; and so the charm was wrought. My accident held me a prisoner for six weeks. But my love put me in chains in six minutes.Her name was Helen; like hers of old"Who fired the topmost towers of Ilium."I liked the stately name of her, for she was of full womanhood,--thirty-three years old; the age at which the French connoisseur said that a charming woman charmed the most.Upon the evening before we parted, I ventured--for we sat at the sheltered end of the piazza, away from the patterers and chatterers, a little by ourselves--to ask her a brave question. I had learned that one might ask her anything; she had originality; she was not of the feminine pattern; she had no paltriness nor pettiness in her thoughts; she looked out, as men do, upon a subject; not down, as women are wont. She was a woman with whom a man couldRead More