He regarded her intimately in one sweep of his eyes. She accepted this also with apparent composure. She was now fully normal in her composition. That about her which others had understood, and were inspired to call beautiful now seemed to strangely affect him.
Was it because he was hungry for woman's love; because since he had looked upon this land of promise and out of the visions she had come to him in those long silent days; because of his lonely young life there in the sod house she had communed with him; was it that he had imagined her sweet radiance that now caused him to feel that she was beautiful?
She had looked away only briefly, as if to give him time to think, to consider her, and then she turned her eyes upon him again. She regarded him frankly then, albeit admiringly. She wanted to hear him say something. She was not herself aware of how anxious she was to hear him speak; for him to say anything, would please her. And as she stood before him in her sweet innocence, all the goodness she possessed, the heart and desire always to be kind, to do for others as she had always, was revealed to him. His dream girl she was, and in reality she had not disappointed him.
If visionary he had loved her, he now saw her and what was hers. Her wondrous hair, rolled into a frivolous knot at the back of her head made her face appear the least slender when it was really square; the chestnut glint of it seemed to contrast coquettishly with her white skin; and the life, the healthy, cheerful life that now gave vigor to her blood brought faint red roses to her cheeks; roses that seemed to come and go. Her red lips seemed to tempt him, he was captivated. He forgot in this intimate survey that she was of one race while he, Jean Baptiste, was of another.... And that between their two races, the invisible barrier, the barrier which, while invisible was so absolute, so strong, so impossible of melting that it was best for the moment that he forget it.
While all he saw passed in a moment, he regarded her slenderness as she stood buttoned in the long coat, and wondered how she, so slight and fragile, had been able to lift his heavy frame upon the bed where he had found himself. And still before words had passed between them, he saw her again, and that singularity in the eyes had come back; they were blue and then they were brown, but withal they were so baffling. He did not seem to understand her when they were like this, yet when so he felt strangely a greater right, the right to look into and feast in what he saw, regardless of the custom of the country and its law.... And still while he was not aware of it, Jean Baptiste came to feel that there was something between them. Though infinite, in the life that was to come, he now came strangely to feel sure that he was to know her, to become more intimately acquainted with her, and with this consciousness he relaxed. The spell that had come from meeting her again, from being near her, from holding her hand in his though formally, the exchange of words passed and he gradually became his usual self; the self that had always been his in this land where others than those of the race to which he belonged were the sole inhabitants. He was relieved when he heard Mrs. Reynolds' voice:
"Miss Stewart and her folks have just moved out from Indiana, Jean, and are renting on the Watson place over east of you; the place that corners with the quarter you purchased last fall, you understand."
"Indeed!" Baptiste echoed with feigned ignorance, his eyebrows dilating.
"Yes," she went on with concern, "And you are neighbors."
"I'm glad—honored," Baptiste essayed.
"He is flattering," blushed Agnes, but she was pleased.