All this picture I did not take in at once; for at first I could see
nothing but those quivering, glittering, changeful eyes turned up
into my face. Gradually the other features (especially the sensitive
full-lipped mouth) grew upon me as I stood silently gazing. Here
seemed to me a more perfect beauty than had ever come to me in my
loveliest dreams of beauty beneath the sea. Yet it was not her beauty
perhaps, so much as the look she gave me, that fascinated me, melted
me.

As she gazed in my face there came over hers a look of pleased
surprise, and then, as her eyes passed rapidly down my limbs and up
again, her face was not overshadowed with the look of disappointment
which I had waited for--yes, waited for, like a pinioned criminal for
the executioner's uplifted knife; but the smile of pleasure was still
playing about the little mouth, while the tender young eyes were
moistening rapidly with the dews of a kind of pity that was new to
me, a pity that did not blister the pride of the lonely wounded
sea-gull, but soothed, healed, and blessed.

Remember that I was a younger son--that I was swarthy--that I was a
cripple--and that my mother--had Frank. It was as though my heart
must leap from my breast towards that child. Not a word had she
spoken, but she had said what the little maimed 'fighting Hal'
yearned to hear, and without _knowing_ that he yearned.

I restrained myself, and did not yield to the feeling that impelled
me to throw my arms round her neck in an ecstasy of wonder and
delight. After a second or two she again threw back her head to gaze
at the golden cloud.