"It is the new life in her which strikes me," he said. "She has brought
wealth with her, and wealth is power to do the good or evil that grows
in a man's soul; but she has brought something more. She might have come
here and brought all the sumptuousness of a fashionable young beauty,
who drove through the village and drew people to their windows, and made
clodhoppers scratch their heads and pull their forelocks, and children
bob curtsies and stare. She might have come and gone and left a
mind-dazzling memory and nothing else. A few sovereigns tossed here
and there would have earned her a reputation--but, by gee! to quote
Selden--she has begun LIVING with them, as if her ancestors had done it
for six hundred years. And what _I_ see is that if she had come without
a penny in her pocket she would have done the same thing." He paused a
pondering moment, and then drew a sharp breath which was an exclamation
in itself. "She's Life!" he said. "She's Life itself! Good God! what a
thing it is for a man or woman to be Life--instead of a mass of tissue
and muscle and nerve, dragged about by the mere mechanism of living!"
Penzance had listened seriously.
"What you say is very suggestive," he commented.
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