She puzzled him by her self-possession, so almost hard, her way of
refusing to show feeling.' Yet what a woman she would make if the drying
curse of high-caste life were not allowed to stereotype and shrivel her!
If enthusiasm were suffered to penetrate and fertilize her soul! She
reminded him of a great tawny lily. He had a vision of her, as that
flower, floating, freed of roots and the mould of its cultivated soil,
in the liberty of the impartial air. What a passionate and noble thing
she might become! What radiance and perfume she would exhale! A spirit
Fleur-de-Lys! Sister to all the noble flowers of light that inhabited
the wind!
Leaning in the deep embrasure of his window, he looked at anonymous
Night. He could hear the owls hoot, and feel a heart beating out there
somewhere in the darkness, but there came no answer to his wondering.
Would she--this great tawny lily of a girl--ever become unconscious of
her environment, not in manner merely, but in the very soul, so that she
might be just a woman, breathing, suffering, loving, and rejoicing with
the poet soul of all mankind? Would she ever be capable of riding out
with the little company of big hearts, naked of advantage? Courtier had
not been inside a church for twenty years, having long felt that he must
not enter the mosques of his country without putting off the shoes of
freedom, but he read the Bible, considering it a very great poem.
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