And then he liked her in many different ways for many different things.
For her impulses, and for her passions which were always elevated. And
already, from breathing the Northland air, he had come to like her for
that comradeship which at first had shocked him. There were other
acquired likings, her lack of prudishness, for instance, which he awoke
one day to find that he had previously confounded with lack of modesty.
And it was only the day before that day that he drifted, before he
thought, into a discussion with her of "Camille." She had seen
Bernhardt, and dwelt lovingly on the recollection. He went home
afterwards, a dull pain gnawing at his heart, striving to reconcile
Frona with the ideal impressed upon him by his mother that innocence
was another term for ignorance. Notwithstanding, by the following day
he had worked it out and loosened another finger of the maternal grip.
He liked the flame of her hair in the sunshine, the glint of its gold
by the firelight, and the waywardness of it and the glory. He liked
her neat-shod feet and the gray-gaitered calves,--alas, now hidden in
long-skirted Dawson. He liked her for the strength of her slenderness;
and to walk with her, swinging her step and stride to his, or to merely
watch her come across a room or down the street, was a delight. Life
and the joy of life romped through her blood, abstemiously filling out
and rounding off each shapely muscle and soft curve.
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