Quotation from: The Professor

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


Frances did not become pale or feeble in consequence of her
sedentary employment; perhaps the stimulus it communicated to her
mind counterbalanced the inaction it imposed on her body. She
changed, indeed, changed obviously and rapidly; but it was for
the better. When I first saw her, her countenance was sunless,
her complexion colourless; she looked like one who had no source
of enjoyment, no store of bliss anywhere in the world; now the
cloud had passed from her mien, leaving space for the dawn of
hope and interest, and those feelings rose like a clear morning,
animating what had been depressed, tinting what had been pale.
Her eyes, whose colour I had not at first known, so dim were they
with repressed tears, so shadowed with ceaseless dejection, now,
lit by a ray of the sunshine that cheered her heart, revealed
irids of bright hazel--irids large and full, screened with long
lashes; and pupils instinct with fire. That look of wan
emaciation which anxiety or low spirits often communicates to a
thoughtful, thin face, rather long than round, having vanished
from hers; a clearness of skin almost bloom, and a plumpness
almost embonpoint, softened the decided lines of her features.
Her figure shared in this beneficial change; it became rounder,
and as the harmony of her form was complete and her stature of
the graceful middle height, one did not regret (or at least I did
not regret) the absence of confirmed fulness, in contours, still
slight, though compact, elegant, flexible--the exquisite turning
of waist, wrist, hand, foot, and ankle satisfied completely my
notions of symmetry, and allowed a lightness and freedom of
movement which corresponded with my ideas of grace.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.