Something had drawn her out of her bed in spite of herself--a voice which was not that of old Joel Mazarine, but a new, fresh, vibrant voice which broke into little spells of inconsequent laughter.

She loved inconsequent laughter, and never heard it at Tralee.

She had crept from her bed and to the window, and before he saw her, she had watched him with a look which slowly became an awakening: as though curtains had been drawn aside revealing a new, strange, ecstatic world.
Louise Mazarine had seen something she had never seen before, because a feeling had been born in her which she had never felt.

She had never fully known what sex was, or in any real sense what man meant.

This romantic, picturesque, buoyant figure of youth struck her as the rock was struck by Moses; and for the first time in all her days she was wholly alive.