He forgot congregational worries and spiritual problems ; the years slipped away from him ; he was a young divinity student again and the roses of June were blooming red and fragrant on the dark , queenly head of his Cecilia . He sat there and dreamed like any boy . And it was at this propitious moment that Rosemary West stepped aside from the by-path and stood beside him in that dangerous , spell-weaving place . John Meredith stood up as she came in and saw her -- REALLY saw her -- for the first time . He had met her in his church once or twice and shaken hands with her abstractedly as he did with anyone he happened to encounter on his way down the aisle . He had never met her elsewhere , for the Wests were Episcopalians , with church affinities in Lowbridge , and no occasion for calling upon them had ever arisen . Before to-night , if anyone had asked John Meredith what Rosemary West looked like he would not have had the slightest notion . But he was never to forget her , as she appeared to him in the glamour of kind moonlight by the spring . She was certainly not in the least like Cecilia , who had always been his ideal of womanly beauty . Cecilia had been small and dark and vivacious -- Rosemary West was tall and fair and placid , yet John Meredith thought he had never seen so beautiful a woman . She was bareheaded and her golden hair -- hair of a warm gold , `` molasses taffy '' colour as Di Blythe had said -- was pinned in sleek , close coils over her head ; she had large , tranquil , blue eyes that always seemed full of friendliness , a high white forehead and a finely shaped face . Rosemary West was always called a `` sweet woman . '' She was so sweet that even her high-bred , stately air had never gained for her the reputation of being `` stuck-up , '' which it would inevitably have done in the case of anyone else in Glen St. Mary . Life had taught her to be brave , to be patient , to love , to forgive . She had watched the ship on which her lover went sailing out of Four Winds Harbour into the sunset . But , though she watched long , she had never seen it coming sailing back . That vigil had taken girlhood from her eyes , yet she kept her youth to a marvellous degree . Perhaps this was because she always seemed to preserve that attitude of delighted surprise towards life which most of us leave behind in childhood -- an attitude which not only made Rosemary herself seem young , but flung a pleasing illusion of youth over the consciousness of every one who talked to her . John Meredith was startled by her loveliness and Rosemary was startled by his presence . She had never thought she would find anyone by that remote spring , least of all the recluse of Glen St. Mary manse .
She almost dropped the heavy armful of books she was carrying home from the Glen lending library , and then , to cover her confusion , she told one XXXXX those small fibs which even the best of women do tell at times .
as because beside for from if of over that though