Never had she known to
such a degree what a delight a body can be, the sense of its
eagerness to bring to the mind all the glorious pleasures of the
senses. Whatever disinclination she had toward him was altogether
a prompting of class education; now that she had let down the bars
and released feeling she was in heart glad he was there with her,
glad he was "such a MAN of a man."
The guides made a huge fire down by the shore, and left them
alone. They sat by it until nearly ten o'clock, he talking
incessantly; her overtures had roused in him the desire to please,
and, instead of the usual monologue of egotism and rant, he poured
out poetry, eloquence, sense and humorous shrewdness. Had he been
far less the unusual, the great man, she would still have listened
with a sense of delight, for in her mood that night his
penetrating voice, which, in other moods, she found as
insupportable as a needle-pointed goad, harmonized with the great,
starry sky and the mysterious, eerie shadows of forest and
mountain and lake close round their huge, bright fire. As they
rose to go in, up came the moon. A broad, benevolent, encouraging
face, the face of a matchmaker.
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