He shrank back from it; closed his eyes against what he might see.
All he knew, then, was an overpowering will to see her.

He turned, inch by inch, little degree by degree, knowing that if, when he turned, he looked into her eyes, the end would rush upon them, overwhelm them, carry them along like straws on the flooding river.

At last his head was turned; he looked.
She lay on her back, smiling as she slept.

One arm hung down from the bunk and the graceful fingers trailed, palm up, on the floor, curling a little, as if she had just relaxed her grasp on something.

And down past her shoulder, half covering the whiteness of her arm, fled the torrent of brown hair, with the firelight playing through it like a sunlit mist.
He rose, and dressed with a deadly caution, for he knew that he must go at once, partly for her sake that he must be seen apart from her this night--partly because he knew that he must leave and never come back.
He had hit upon the distinctive feature of the girl--a purity as thin and clear as the air of the uplands in which she drew breath.