should set in motion the whole complicated machinery of their exercise,
and a trifle suspend it.

We had been moving onward for some little time, when the girl's
companion addressed an observation to her. She heard it imperfectly,
and lifted her veil while it was being repeated. How painfully my heart
beat! I could almost hear it--as her face was, for the first time,
freely and fairly disclosed!

She was dark. Her hair, eyes, and complexion were darker than usual in
English women. The form, the look altogether, of her face, coupled
with what I could see of her figure, made me guess her age to be about
twenty. There was the appearance of maturity already in the shape of
her features; but their expression still remained girlish, unformed,
unsettled. The fire in her large dark eyes, when she spoke, was latent.
Their languor, when she was silent--that voluptuous languor of black
eyes--was still fugitive and unsteady. The smile about her full lips (to
other eyes, they might have looked _too_ full) struggled to be
eloquent, yet dared not. Among women, there always seems something left
incomplete--a moral creation to be superinduced on the physical--which
love alone can develop, and which maternity perfects still further, when
developed. I thought, as I looked on her, how the passing colour would
fix itself brilliantly on her round, olive cheek; how the expression
that still hesitated to declare itself, would speak out at last, would
shine forth in the full luxury of its beauty, when she heard the first
words, received the first kiss, from the man she loved!

While I still looked at her, as she sat opposite speaking to her
companion, our eyes met. It was only for a moment--but the sensation of
a moment often makes the thought of a life; and that one little instant
made the new life of my heart. She put down her veil again immediately;
her lips moved involuntarily as she lowered it: I thought I could
discern, through the lace, that the slight movement ripened to a smile.

Still there was enough left to see--enough to charm. There was the
little rim of delicate white lace, encircling the lovely, dusky throat;
there was the figure visible, where the shawl had fallen open, slender,
but already well developed in its slenderness, and exquisitely supple;
there was the waist, naturally low, and left to its natural place and
natural size; there were the little millinery and jewellery ornaments
that she wore--simple and common-place