She was as straight--I mean she had as little of what
people call figure--as a bamboo; her shoulders were a trifle high, and she
had a decided stoop; her arms and her shoulders she never once wore
uncovered. But this bamboo figure of hers had a suppleness and a
stateliness, a play of outline with every step she took, that I can't
compare to anything else; there was in it something of the peacock and
something also of the stag; but, above all, it was her own. I wish I could
describe her. I wish, alas!--I wish, I wish, I have wished a hundred
thousand times--I could paint her, as I see her now, if I shut my
eyes--even if it were only a silhouette. There! I see her so plainly,
walking slowly up and down a room, the slight highness of her shoulders;
just completing the exquisite arrangement of lines made by the straight
supple back, the long exquisite neck, the head, with the hair cropped in
short pale curls, always drooping a little, except when she would suddenly
throw it back, and smile, not at me, nor at any one, nor at anything that
had been said, but as if she alone had suddenly seen or heard something,
with the strange dimple in her thin, pale cheeks, and the strange whiteness
in her full, wide-opened eyes: the moment when she had something of the
stag in her movement.
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