`` Maybe he 's worried over the way Seth Tracy 's acting in school , '' suggested Mrs. Williamson , who did not choose that her gossipy husband should suspect the truth about Eric and Kilmeny Gordon . `` Shucks , he need n't worry a morsel over that . Seth 'll quiet down as soon as he finds he ca n't run the Master . He 's a rare good teacher -- better 'n Mr. West was even , and that 's saying something . The trustees are hoping he 'll stay for another term . They 're going to ask him at the school meeting to-morrow , and offer him a raise of supplement . '' Upstairs , in his little room under the eaves , Eric Marshall was in the grip of the most intense and overwhelming emotion he had ever experienced . Up and down , to and fro , he walked , with set lips and clenched hands . When he was wearied out he flung himself on a chair by the window and wrestled with the flood of feeling . Mrs. Williamson 's words had torn away the delusive veil with which he had bound his eyes . He was face to face with the knowledge that he loved Kilmeny Gordon with the love that comes but once , and is for all time . He wondered how he could have been so long blind to it . He knew that he must have loved her ever since their first meeting that May evening in the old orchard . And he knew that he must choose between two alternatives -- either he must never go to the orchard again , or he must go as an avowed lover to woo him a wife . Worldly prudence , his inheritance from a long line of thrifty , cool-headed ancestors , was strong in Eric , and he did not yield easily or speedily to the dictates of his passion . All night he struggled against the new emotions that threatened to sweep away the `` common sense '' which David Baker had bade him take with him when he went a-wooing . Would not a marriage with Kilmeny Gordon be an unwise thing from any standpoint ? Then something stronger and greater and more vital than wisdom or unwisdom rose up in him and mastered him . Kilmeny , beautiful , dumb Kilmeny was , as he had once involuntarily thought , `` the one maid '' for him . Nothing should part them .
The mere idea of never seeing her again was so unbearable that he laughed at himself XXXXX having counted it a possible alternative .
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