hair, fine eyebrows, and a clear complexion; and the forces that had
modelled her features had loved and lingered at their work and made them
subtle and fine. She was slender, and sometimes she seemed tall, and
walked and carried herself lightly and joyfully as one who commonly
and habitually feels well, and sometimes she stooped a little and
was preoccupied. Her lips came together with an expression between
contentment and the faintest shadow of a smile, her manner was one of
quiet reserve, and behind this mask she was wildly discontented and
eager for freedom and life.

She wanted to live. She was vehemently impatient--she did not clearly
know for what--to do, to be, to experience. And experience was slow in
coming. All the world about her seemed to be--how can one put it?--in
wrappers, like a house when people leave it in the summer. The blinds
were all drawn, the sunlight kept out, one could not tell what
colors these gray swathings hid. She wanted to know. And there was no
intimation whatever that the blinds would ever go up or the windows or
doors be opened, or the chandeliers, that seemed to promise such a blaze
of fire, unveiled and furnished and lit. Dim souls flitted about her,
not only speaking but it would seem even thinking in undertones....

During her school days, especially her earlier school days, the world
had been very explicit with her, telling her what to do, what not to do,
giving her lessons to learn and games to play and interests of the most
suitable and various kinds. Presently she woke up to the fact that there
was a considerable group of interests called being in love and getting
married, with certain attractive and amusing subsidiary developments,
such as flirtation and "being interested" in people of the opposite sex.
She approached this field with her usual liveliness of apprehension. But
here she met with a check. These interests her world promptly, through