He went away a few days later , and Helen bade him an impassive good-bye . When the afternoon was far spent she stole away from the house to the shore , with her Tennyson in her hand , and took her way to the Kelpy 's Cave . The tide was just beginning to come in . She sat down on the big boulder where Reeves had fallen asleep . Beyond stretched the gleaming blue waters , mellowing into a hundred fairy shades horizonward . The shadows of the rocks were around her . In front was the white line of the incoming tide ; it had almost reached the headlands . A few minutes more and escape would be cut off -- yet she did not move . When the dark green water reached her , and the lapping wavelets swished up over the hem of her dress , she lifted her head and a sudden strange smile flashed over her face . Perhaps the kelpy understood it . The Way of the Winning of Anne Jerome Irving had been courting Anne Stockard for fifteen years . He had begun when she was twenty and he was twenty-five , and now that Jerome was forty , and Anne , in a village where everybody knew everybody else 's age , had to own to being thirty-five , the courtship did not seem any nearer a climax than it had at the beginning . But that was not Jerome 's fault , poor fellow ! At the end of the first year he had asked Anne to marry him , and Anne had refused . Jerome was disappointed , but he kept his head and went on courting Anne just the same ; that is he went over to Esek Stockard 's house every Saturday night and spent the evening , he walked home with Anne from prayer meeting and singing school and parties when she would let him , and asked her to go to all the concerts and socials and quilting frolics that came off . Anne never would go , of course , but Jerome faithfully gave her the chance . Old Esek rather favoured Jerome 's suit , for Anne was the plainest of his many daughters , and no other fellow seemed at all anxious to run Jerome off the track ; but she took her own way with true Stockard firmness , and matters were allowed to drift on at the will of time or chance . Three years later Jerome tried his luck again , with precisely the same result , and after that he had asked Anne regularly once a year to marry him , and just as regularly Anne said no a little more brusquely and a little more decidedly every year . Now , in the mellowness of a fifteen-year-old courtship , Jerome did not mind it at all . He knew that everything comes to the man who has patience to wait .
Time , of course , had not stood still XXXXX Anne and Jerome , or with the history of Deep Meadows .
Beyond In around at for into of that to with