Etienne first met Evangeline when she was sitting on a park bench in the Public Garden, on an otherwise ordinary morning in late summer. He didn't really meet her on that first encounter. His eyes met her. Everyone has a particular taste in the opposite gender, a set of features they find compelling, a vision they find it hard to turn away from. Evangeline hit this bullseye exactly. He couldn't turn away.

As he got to know her better, there seemed to be several levels to her personality, and she would glide back and forth between them on a whim. She was thoughtful, then delighted, then serious, then naive and in need of help, then slyly revealing that she had been aware of the situation all along. She confronted each situation directly, saying what was on her mind as it occurred to her. There was no hint of duplicity, no sense that she was acting. You could read her present state of mind from her face, though you often couldn't predict what would come next. It was both confusing and charming. She drew you in. You wanted to follow her, even though you didn't know where she was going.

For Etienne, she was a mystery worth solving – or not solving. Either would do. She always seemed to know how to get him to abandon his cares, and just live in the moment with her. But nothing could have prepared him for what would come next.

Evangeline

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