Fresh spring, and summer, and the winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more—Oh, never more!"
"Surely that does not express your feelings—and you still a young and beautiful woman?"
"No, but I am profoundly moved by the sad beauty of it; and by the fact that perhaps Poe got his refrain of 'nevermore' for his Raven as a reminiscence from it."
She laughed engagingly with feminine inconsequence and stooped down to recover a slight, silver bracelet that had slipped off over one of her small hands. I caught a brief glimpse of the white division of her breasts as she stooped over. The vision stabbed my heart with keen enjoyment that pained....
Already we were caught up in a current of mysterious fellow-feeling that was soon to bear us onward to the full ocean of frank love and passion. Though at this time neither she nor I perceived it.
Penton came in ... the little, handsome, red-faced man, with his Napoleonic head too large for his small, stocky body ... his large, luminous eyes like those of the Italian fisher boy in the painting ... his mouth a little too large ... his chin a trifle too heavy-jowled. His hands were feminine ... but his feet were encased in heavy shoes that made them seem the feet of a six-foot day labourer....
Ruth, his secretary, coming close behind him,—was tall, not ungraceful in an easy, almost mannish way ... slab-figured ... built more like a boy than a young woman dangerously near the old maid. She too wore bloomers. Her face was tanned. It was too broad and placid for either prettiness or beauty, but a mischievous tilt to the nose and large calm hazel eyes kept her this side of mere plainness....