Yes, though a tall girl of seventeen, she was the same incomparable
child who had coloured my life and stirred the entire air of my
imagination with the breezes of a new heaven. The voice of the
tumbling sea in the distance, the caresses of the tender breeze, the
wistful gaze of the great moon overhead, were companionship enough
for her--for her whose loveliness would have enchanted a world. She
had no idea that there was at this moment stepping round those black
stones the loveliest woman then upon the earth. If she had had that
idea she would still have been the star of all womanhood, but she
would not have been Winifred. A charm superior to all other women's
charm she still would have had; but she would not have been Winifred.
When she left the rocks and came upon the clear sand, she stopped
and looked at her sweet shadow in the moonlight. Then, with the
self-pleasing playfulness of a kitten, she stood and put herself
into all kinds of postures to see what varying silhouettes they would
make on the hard and polished sand (that shone with a soft lustre
like satin); now throwing up one arm, now another, and at last making
a pirouette, twirling her shawl round, trying to keep it in a
horizontal position by the rapidity of her movements.
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