brown hair, which had once flowed down her back in a jolly pig-tail
tied with a bit of scarlet ribbon, was now caught up into an
intricacy of pretty curves above her little ear and cheek, and the
soft long lines of her neck; her white dress had descended to her
feet; her slender waist, which had once been a mere geographical
expression, an imaginary line like the equator, was now a thing
of flexible beauty. A year ago she had been a pretty girl's face
sticking out from a little unimportant frock that was carried upon
an extremely active and efficient pair of brown-stockinged legs.
Now there was coming a strange new body that flowed beneath her
clothes with a sinuous insistence. Every movement, and particularly
the novel droop of her hand and arm to the unaccustomed skirts she
gathered about her, and a graceful forward inclination that had come
to her, called softly to my eyes. A very fine scarf--I suppose you
would call it a scarf--of green gossamer, that some new wakened
instinct had told her to fling about her shoulders, clung now closely
to the young undulations of her body, and now streamed fluttering
out for a moment in a breath of wind, and like some shy independent
tentacle with a secret to impart, came into momentary contact with
my arm.

She caught it back and reproved it.

We went through the green gate in the high garden wall. I held it
open for her to pass through, for this was one of my restricted
stock of stiff politenesses, and then for a second she was near
touching me. So we came to the trim array of flower-beds near the
head gardener's cottage and the vistas of "glass" on our left. We
walked between the box edgings and beds of begonias and into the
shadow of a yew hedge within twenty yards of that very pond with