She listened to me
sympathetically, no little amazed at my being so devoid of practical
common sense. She stood with both feet on the earth; but she had one
capacity that I had not met with before in any young woman--the capacity
for enthusiasm. She had dark eyes, with something melancholy in their
depths; but when she spoke of anything that roused her enthusiasm, her
eyes shone like stars.
She pointed out how preposterous it was in me to wish to seek so far
away a happiness that perhaps was very close to me, and how even more
preposterous to neglect, as I had done, my studies and intellectual aims
for a fantastic love. And for the first time in my life, a young woman
spoke to me of my abilities and of the impression she had received of
them, partly through the reading of the trifles that I had had printed,
partly, and more particularly, through her long talks with me. Neither
the little French girl nor the young Spanish lady had ever spoken to me
of myself, my talents, or my future; this Danish woman declared that she
knew me through and through. And the new thing about it all, the thing
hitherto unparalleled in my experience, was that she believed in me.
More than that: she had the highest possible conception of my abilities,
asserted in contradiction to my own opinion, that I was already a man of
unusual mark, and was ardently ambitious for me.
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