after due meditation, came to the conclusion
that this was the outcome of her recognition
of her own singularity: in trying to be like
other people, she fell into caricature. Freeman,
somehow, liked her the better for it.
Like most men of brain and pith, who
have seen and thought much, he was thankful
for a new thing, because, so far as it
went, it renewed him. It pleased him to
imagine that he could, with a word or a
look, cause this veil of artifice to be thrown
aside, and the primitive passion and fierceness
behind it to start forth. He allowed
himself to imagine, with a certain satisfaction,
that were he to make this young woman
jealous she would think nothing of thrusting
a dagger between his ribs. Reality,--what
a delight it is! The actual touch and feeling
of the spontaneous natural creature have
been so buried beneath centuries of hypocrisy
and humbug that we have ceased to
believe in them save as a metaphysical
abstraction. But even as water, long depressed
under-ground in perverse channels, surges
up to the surface, and above it, at last, in a
fountain of relief, so Nature, after enduring
ages of outrage and banishment, leaps back
to her rightful domain in some individual
whom we call extraordinary because he or
she is natural. Grace Parsloe did not seem