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She was a woman-child, but she was daughter of all women, as her mother before her, and she was the mother of all women to come after her. She was Sar, the corn-goddess. She was Isthar who conquered death. She was Sheba and Cleopatra; she was Esther and Herodias. She was Mary the Madonna, and Mary the Magdalene, and Mary the sister of Martha, also she was Martha.
She had learned the love of man, and in a measure it had cast out fear, that had been her earlier lesson. To be held and taken and made his completely, what must it be like? She glowed in the darkness at the thought. And then the recollection of a ruthless strength that had rent away the veil of innocence from a woman-child surged back upon her. Just think.
So he worked, and waited, and prayed to the wind which knew could not hear. While the woman-child, oblivious, pursued the treacherous shadow of revenge. It should be said in her defense that Sylviana had not stopped loving him.
He aroused himself, shivering, and looked out into the room where the shadows lay heavy, and from whence came the breathing of the sleepers. He picked up the now sputtering candle, set in its hole bored in a block of wood, and held it up for a last look at the little woman-child. He was full of an agony of wonder as he gazed, of piteous questioning why this should be as it was.
She tried to put it aside, but at such times it would rise up till I could read it in the look of her eyes, in the very intake of her breath. "So in the end she bore me a child, a woman-child, and died. Then I went among my mother's people, that it might nurse at a warm breast and live. But my hands were wet with the blood of men, look you, because of the church, wet with the blood of men.
We laughed under the sun in the morning, when our man-child and woman-child, yellowed like honey-bees, sprawled and rolled in the mustard, and at night she lay close in my arms, and loved me, and urged me, because of my skill at the seasoning of woods and the flaking of arrow-heads, that I should stay close by the camp and let the other men bring to me the meat from the perils of hunting.
All agreed that some wire connecting heart and brain had burned out when the cruel "System" threw on a voltage beyond the wire's capacity to transmit. All agreed that the woman-child wife would never grow older unless through some mental eruption beyond human power to produce. Some of the medical men pointed to one possibility, but that one was too terrible for Bob to entertain.
But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the nameless wants and cares of a frail female child? And she has been so delicately reared, the woman-child needs the fostering hand and tender eye of a woman."
Were it otherwise, were there even but a single woman-child of your divine race, I would say nothing, I would be silent as the grave.
'If you'll be very careful, Sara, I'll let you hold it. It was as if she well knew the deft little hands she had delivered the ornament to, and knew equally well that in her present mood, absorption in the beauty of it would keep the woman-child still. 'There, that's better! Cecil replaced his arms firmly where the necklace had been.
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