Her voice was a deep contralto, and she
knew how to assume an expression of profound gravity and reflection. But
she captivated most by her attentiveness. When a young man whom she
wished to attract commenced a conversation with her, she never took her
eyes from his, or rather she gazed into his, and showed such a rapt
attention to his words, such an interest in his thoughts and his
occupations, that after meeting her once he never forgot her again. Her
coquetry did not consist of languishing glances, but of a pretended
sympathy, that flattered and delighted its object.
IV.
These Danish girls were likely to appeal to a young man just returned
from travels abroad, during which his emotions had been doubly stirred,
for the first time, by feminine affection and by enthusiasm for a woman.
They influenced me the more strongly because they were Danish, and
because I, who loved everything Danish, from the language to the
monuments, had, since the war, felt something lacking in everyone, man
or woman, who was foreign to Denmark.
But in the midst of all these visitations of calf-love, and their
vibrations among undefined sensations, I was pulled back with a jerk, as
it were, to my earlier and deepest impression, that of the loveliness
and exalted person of the young Spaniard.
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