If her inherent dignity made an impenetrable nimbus round her, this was against others; she herself was not bound by it, or to be bound.

So marked was this, so entirely and sweetly womanly did she appear, that I caught myself wondering in flashes of thought, which came as sharp periods of doubting judgment between spells of unconscious fascination, how I had ever come to think she was aught but perfect woman.

As she rested, half sitting and half lying on the pile of cushions, she was all grace, and beauty, and charm, and sweetness--the veritable perfect woman of the dreams of a man, be he young or old.

To have such a woman sit by his hearth and hold her holy of holies in his heart might well be a rapture to any man.

Even an hour of such entrancing joy might be well won by a lifetime of pain, by the balance of a long life sacrificed, by the extinction of life itself.
Quick behind the record of such thoughts came the answer to the doubt they challenged: if it should turn out that she was not living at all, but one of the doomed and pitiful Un-Dead, then so much more on account of her very sweetness and beauty would be the winning of her back to Life and Heaven--even were it that she might find happiness in the heart and in the arms of another man.
Once, when I leaned over the hearth to put fresh logs on the fire, my face was so close to hers that I felt her breath on my cheek.