It overjoyed him to give the choicest dusters he found into her slim , waxen little fingers , and watch her eyes grow round with pleasure in them . When the sun began to lower over the beeches she had gone home with her arms full of arbutus , but she had turned at the edge of the pineland and waved her hand at him . That night , when he told his mother of the little girl he had met on the hill , she had hoped anxiously that he had been `` very polite , '' for the little girl was a daughter of Colonel Stuart , newly come to Pinehurst . Jeffrey , reflecting , had not been certain that he had been polite ; `` But I am sure she liked me , '' he said gravely . A few days later a message came from Mrs. Stuart on the hill to Mrs. Miller in the valley . Would she let her little boy go up now and then to play with Sara ? Sara was very lonely because she had no playmates . So Jeff , overjoyed , had gone to his divinity 's very home , where the two children played together many a day . All through their childhood they had been fast friends . Sara 's parents placed no bar to their intimacy . They had soon concluded that little Jeff Miller was a very good playmate for Sara . He was gentle , well-behaved , and manly . Sara never went to the district school which Jeff attended ; she had her governess at home . With no other boy or girl in Bayside did she form any friendship , but her loyalty to Jeff never wavered . As for Jeff , he worshipped her and would have done anything she commanded . He belonged to her from the day they had hunted arbutus on the hill . When Sara was fifteen she had gone away to school . Jeff had missed her sorely . For four years he saw her only in the summers , and each year she had seemed taller , statelier , further from him . When she graduated her father took her abroad for two years ; then she came home , a lovely , high-bred girl , dimpling on the threshold of womanhood ; and Jeffrey Miller was face to face with two bitter facts .
One was that he loved her -- not with the boy-and-girl love of long ago , but with the love of a man for the one woman in the world ; and the other was XXXXX she was as far beyond his reach as one of those sunset stars of which she had always reminded him in her pure , clear-shining loveliness .
With at because for from of on over that through