Clayton insisted, and the trade was made. The old woman resumed
spinning. The girl took her seat in the low chair, holding her new
treasure in her lap, with her eyes fixed on it, and occasionally
running one brown hand down its shining barrel. Clayton watched
her. She had given no sign whatever that she had ever seen him
before, and yet a curious change had come over her. Her imperious
manner had yielded to a singular reserve and timidity. The
peculiar beauty of the girl struck him now with unusual force. Her
profile was remarkably regular and delicate; her mouth small,
resolute, and sensitive; heavy, dark lashes shaded her downcast
eyes; and her brow suggested a mentality that he felt a strong
desire to test. Her feet were small, and so were her quick, nervous
hands, which were still finely shaped, in spite of the hard usage
that had left them brown and callous. He wondered if she was
really as lovely as she seemed; if his standard might not have been
affected by his long stay in the mountains; if her picturesque
environment might not have influenced his judgment. He tried to
imagine her daintily slippered, clad in white, with her loose hair
gathered in a Psyche knot; or in evening dress, with arms and
throat bare; but the pictures were difficult to make. He liked her
best as she was, in perfect physical sympathy with the natural
phases about her; as much a part of them as tree, plant, or flower,
embodying the freedom, grace, and beauty of nature as well and as
unconsciously as they. He questioned whether she hardly felt
herself to be apart from them; and, of course, she as little knew her
kinship to them.

She had lifted her eyes now, and had fixed them with tender
thoughtfulness on the mountains. What did she see in the scene
before her, he wondered: the deep valley, brilliant with early