But he looked at her as at a picture . When he tried to think and dream of her , it bored him . Besides , he knew she had a rather nasal voice . He used to laugh sarcastically to himself over Elsa 's feelings if she had known how desperately he was trying to fall in love with her and failing -- Elsa the queen of hearts , who believed she had only to look to reign . He gave up trying at last , but he still longed to love . He knew he would never marry ; he could not marry plainness , and beauty would have longed to love . He knew he would never marry ; he could not marry plainness , and beauty would have none of him ; but he did not want to miss everything and he had moments when he was very bitter and rebellious because he felt he must miss it forever . He went straight to Isabel Temple 's grave in the remote shore field of his farm . Isabel Temple had lived and died eighty years ago . She had been very lovely , very wilful , very fond of playing with the hearts of men . She had married William Temple , the brother of his great-grandfather , and as she stood in her white dress beside her bridegroom , at the conclusion of the wedding ceremony , a jilted lover , crazed by despair , had entered the house and shot her dead . She had been buried in the shore field , where a square space had been dyked off in the centre for a burial lot because the church was then so far away . With the passage of years the lot had grown up so thickly with fir and birch and wild cherry that it looked like a compact grove . A winding path led through it to its heart where Isabel Temple 's grave was , thickly overgrown with long , silken , pale green grass . Roger hurried along the path and sat down on the big grey boulder by the grave , looking about him with a long breath of delight . How lovely -- and witching -- and unearthly it was here . Little ferns were growing in the hollows and cracks of the big boulder where clay had lodged . Over Isabel Temple 's crooked , lichened gravestone hung a young wild cherry in its delicate bloom . Above it , in a little space of sky left by the slender tree tops , was a young moon . It was too dark here after all to read Wordsworth , but that did not matter .
The place , XXXXX its moist air , its tang of fir balsam , was like a perfumed room where a man might dream dreams and see visions .
Above along as beside if of on over through with