Somehow Eric did not like her references to Neil . The idea of that handsome , low-born boy seeing Kilmeny every day , talking to her , sitting at the same table with her , dwelling under the same roof , meeting her in the hundred intimacies of daily life , was distasteful to him . He put the thought away from him , and flung himself down on the long grass at her feet . `` Now play for me , please , '' he said . `` I want to lie here and listen to you . '' `` And look at you , '' he might have added . He could not tell which was the greater pleasure . Her beauty , more wonderful than any pictured loveliness he had ever seen , delighted him . Every tint and curve and outline of her face was flawless . Her music enthralled him . This child , he told himself as he listened , had genius . But it was being wholly wasted . He found himself thinking resentfully of the people who were her guardians , and who were responsible for her strange life . They had done her a great and irremediable wrong . How dared they doom her to such an existence ? If her defect of utterance had been attended to in time , who knew but that it might have been cured ? Now it was probably too late . Nature had given her a royal birthright of beauty and talent , but their selfish and unpardonable neglect had made it of no account . What divine music she lured out of the old violin -- merry and sad , gay and sorrowful by turns , music such as the stars of morning might have made singing together , music that the fairies might have danced to in their revels among the green hills or on yellow sands , music that might have mourned over the grave of a dead hope . Then she drifted into a still sweeter strain .
As he listened XXXXX it he realized that the whole soul and nature of the girl were revealing themselves to him through her music -- the beauty and purity of her thoughts , her childhood dreams and her maiden reveries .
If as at for in into on than to under