e was bare-headed) gave it a metallic lustre, and it was
difficult to say what was the colour, dark bronze or black. So
completely absorbed was she in watching the cloud to which her
strange song or incantation seemed addressed, that she did not
observe me when I rose and went towards her. Over her head, high up
in the blue, a lark that was soaring towards the same gauzy cloud was
singing, as if in rivalry. As I slowly approached the child, I could
see by her forehead (which in the sunshine gleamed like a globe of
pearl), and especially by her complexion, that she was uncommonly
lovely, and I was afraid lest she should look down before I got close
to her, and so see my crutches before her eyes encountered my face.
She did not, however, seem to hear me coming along the grass (so
intent was she with her singing) until I was close to her, and
throwing my shadow over her. Then she suddenly lowered her head and
looked at me in surprise. I stood transfixed at her astonishing
beauty. No other picture has ever taken such possession of me. In its
every detail it lives before me now. Her eyes (which at one moment
seemed blue grey, at another violet) were shaded by long black
lashes, curving backward in a most peculiar way, and these matched
in hue her eyebrows, and the tresses that were tossed about her
tender throat and were quivering in the sunlight.

All this picture I did not take in at once; for at first I could see
nothing but those quivering, glittering, changeful eyes turned up
into my face. Gradually the other features (especially the sensitive
full-lipped mouth) grew upon me as I stood silently gazing. Here
seemed to me a more perfect beauty than had ever come to me in my
loveliest dreams of beauty beneath the sea. Yet it was not her beauty
perhaps, so much as the look she gave me, that fascinated me, melted
me.

As she gazed in my face there came over hers a look of pleased
surprise, and then, as her eyes passed rapidly down my limbs and up
again, her face was not overshadowed with the look of disappointment
which I had waited for--yes, waited for, like a pinioned criminal for
the executioner's uplifted knife; but the smile of pleasure was still
playing about the little mouth, while the tender young eyes were
moistening rapidly with the dews of a kind of pity that was new to
me, a pity that did not blister the pride of the lonely wounded
sea-gull, but soothed, healed, and blessed.

Remember that I was a younger so