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 that 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 . He looked these facts unflinchingly in the face until he had grown used to them , and then he laid down his course for himself . He loved Sara -- and he did not wish to conquer his love , even if it had been possible . It were better to love her , whom he could never win , than to love and be loved by any other woman . His great office in life was to be her friend , humble and unexpectant ; to be at hand if she should need him for ever so trifling a service ; never to presume , always to be faithful . Sara had not forgotten her old friend . But their former comradeship was now impossible ; they could be friends , but never again companions . Sara 's life was full and gay ; she had interests in which he had no share ; her social world was utterly apart from his ; she was of the hill and its traditions , he was of the valley and its people .
The democracy of childhood past , there was no common ground XXXXX which they might meet .
as for from in of on that through until with