A man and a girl stood looking
down in silence at the village, Ploumariel, from their post of vantage,
half way up the hill: at its lichened church spire, dotted with little
gables, like dove-cotes; at the slated roof of its market; at its quiet
white houses. The man's eyes rested on it complacently, with the enjoyment
of the painter, finding it charming: the girl's, a little absently, as
one who had seen it very often before. She was pretty and very young, but
her gray serious eyes, the poise of her head, with its rebellious brown
hair braided plainly, gave her a little air of dignity, of reserve which
sat piquantly upon her youth. In one ungloved hand, that was brown from
the sun, but very beautiful, she held an old parasol, the other played
occasionally with a bit of purple heather. Presently she began to speak,
using English just coloured by a foreign accent, that made her speech
prettier.
'You make me afraid,' she said, turning her large, troubled eyes on her
companion, 'you make me afraid, of myself chiefly, but a little of you. You
suggest so much to me that is new, strange, terrible. When you speak, I am
troubled; all my old landmarks appear to vanish; I even hardly know right
from wrong.
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