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But he understood. He had the spirit of adventure himself one could see it at a glance the spirit that instinctively shuns yesterday and all its works and wings eagerly into tomorrow, unknown, different, new therefore better. But this girl, this child-woman or was she rather woman-child? penniless, with nothing but two eggs between her and starvation, alone, without plans, without experience
The soul of the wild, little mountain creature was in her eyes. Her lips made no concealment of its thoughts or its emotions, pure as the blue skies above them and as ungoverned by conventionality as the winds that shifted up and down the valleys. She was a new sort of being to him, a child-woman, a little wonder-nymph that had grown up with the flowers. And yet not so little after all.
"'Like a little sugar figure on a wedding-cake, looking sweet, and smiling pleasant!" thought Walden, humorously recalling his gardener's description; "Scarcely that! She has a will of her own, and possibly a temper! A kind of spoilt child-woman, I should imagine; just the person to wear all the fripperies Mrs.
Also I must learn to manipulate the rôle of mother without being one. Soon after the girl's break with her family the ineffective child-woman who had given Zura life passed quietly into the great Silence before the daughter could be summoned. Though Zura was included among the mourners at the stately funeral, she had no communication with her grandfather. Afterwards the separation was final.
She shuddered at the arctic desolation of the vast snow-fields. The mountains were sheeted with silence and purity. It seemed to the untaught child-woman that she was face to face with the Almighty. Once during the night she had partially awakened to hear the roaring wind as it buffeted snow-clouds across the range.
Who he was; where he had gone; why his work stood there unfinished and abandoned, were details which for the moment this half-savage child-woman forgot to question. She was conscious only of a sense of revelation and awe. Then she saw other boards, like the one upon the easel, piled near the paint -box.
To the boys, hanging back awkwardly at the gate, the slim child-woman was a vision wonderful. Their starved eyes found in her white loveliness a glimpse of heaven. Her father laughed. "Joy ain't dressed for callers. Come in, boys." He lit a lamp and drew Dave to a lounge. "Lemme look at yore haid, son. Bob, you hot-foot it for Doc Green."
Sometimes he was seized with sudden moods of rebellion against his new slavery, and was almost rude to her, saying things which she would not have forgiven readily from another, but the child-woman appeared to find a keen delight in forgiving him. Seeing the preference bestowed upon the young American, Paolo's brother and sister were inclined to make common cause with me.
Again, quaintest and oddest of all, is the fancy kindled by that "mysterious sprite of genius," as one of her contemporaries calls her, Bettina Brentano, the gifted child-woman, who fascinated all who came within her reach, from Goethe and Beethoven down to princes and nobles. Goethe's correspondence with this strange being has embalmed her life in classic literature.
Here was another rose blooming in the wilderness, a face lovely and beautiful as a spring reflecting the sky in the middle of a wood. How had she come there, that beautiful child-woman in the solitude?
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