She went out, but came back
presently, every grain of dust gone, in her clear dress of pearl
gray. The neutral tint suited her well. As she stood by the
window, listening gravely to them, the homely face and waiting
figure came into full relief. Nature had made the woman in a
freak of rare sincerity. There were no reflected lights about
her; no gloss on her skin, no glitter in her eyes, no varnish on
her soul. Simple and dark and pure, there she was, for God and
her master to conquer and understand. Her flesh was cold and
colourless,--there were no surface tints on it,--it warmed
sometimes slowly from far within; her voice, quiet,--out of her
heart; her hair, the only beauty of the woman, was lustreless
brown, lay in unpolished folds of dark shadow. I saw such hair
once, only once. It had been cut from the head of a man, who,
unconscious, simple as a child, lived out the law of his nature,
and set the world at defiance,--Bysshe Shelley.
The Doctor, talking to her father, watched the girl furtively,
took in every point, as one might critically survey a Damascus
blade which he was going to carry into battle. There was neither
love nor scorn in his look,--a mere fixedness of purpose to make
use of her some day. He talked, meanwhile, glancing at her now
and then, as if the subject they discussed were indirectly linked
with his plan for her. If it were, she was unconscious of it.
She sat on the wooden step of the porch, looking out on the
melancholy sweep of meadow and hill range growing cool and dimmer
in the dun twilight, not hearing what they said, until the
sharpened, earnest tones roused her.
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