eyond expression. She said simple things--'I slept well last
night,' or 'I dreamed,' or 'I shivered,' and plunged me headlong down
impenetrable forests. The mould of her mouth to a reluctant 'No,' and her
almost invariable drawing in of her breath with a 'Yes,' surcharged the
everyday monosyllables with meanings of life and death. At last I was
reduced to tell her, seeing that she reproached my coldness for Janet,
how much I wished Janet resembled her. Her Irish eyes lightened: 'Me!
Harry'; then they shadowed: 'She is worth ten of me.' Such pathetic
humility tempted me to exalt her supremely.

I talked like a boy, feeling like a man: she behaved like a woman,
blushing like a girl.

'Julia! I can never call you Mrs. Bulsted.'

'You have an affection for my husband, have you not, Harry?'

Of a season when this was adorable language to me, the indication is
sufficient. Riding out perfectly crazed by it, I met Kiomi, and
transferred my emotions. The squire had paid her people an annual sum to
keep away from our neighbourhood, while there was a chance of my taking
to gipsy life. They had come back to their old camping-ground, rather
dissatisfied with the squire.

'Speak to him yourself, Kiomi,' said I; 'whatever you ask for, he can't
refuse anything to such eyes as yours.'

'You!' she rallied me; 'why can't you talk sensible stuff!'

She had grown a superb savage, proof against weather and compliments. Her
face was like an Egyptian sky fronting night. The strong old Eastern
blood put ruddy flame for the red colour; tawny olive edged from the red;
rare vivid yellow, all but amber. The light that first looks down upon
the fallen sun was her complexion above the brows, and round the cheeks,
the neck's nape, the throat, and the firm bosom prompt to lift and sink
with her vigour of speech, as her eyes were to flash and darken. Meeting
her you swore she was the personification of wandering Asia. There was no
question of beauty and grace, for these have laws. The curve of her brows
broke like a beaten wave; the lips and nostrils were wide, tragic in
repose. But when she laughed she illuminated you; where she stepped she
made the earth hers. She was as fresh of her East as the morning when her
ancient people struck tents in the track of their shadows. I write of her
in the style consonant to my ideas of her at the time. I would have
carried her off on the impulse and lived her life, merely to have had
such a picture moving in