But this appreciation of the
height and grandeur of man's endeavour was new in her. To Nature she had
from childhood, been curiously near. She sought expression and
confirmation of it with silent ardour, her mind aflame with the joy of
recognition. And, as daily, hourly background to these her many
experiments and excursions, was the stable interest of her father's book.
For in the pages of that, too, she caught sight of beauty and reality of
no mean order, held nobly to ransom through the medium of words.
And while this high humour still possessed her, alive at every point,
her thoughts--often by day, still oftener in dreams or wakeful
intervals by night--rapt away beyond the stars, she was called upon, as
already noted, to pass abruptly from the dynamic to the static mode.
Called on to embrace domestic duties, and meet local social
obligations, including polite endurance of long-drawn disquisitions
regarding Canon Horniblow's impending curate. The drop proved
disconcerting, or would have eminently done so had not another
element--disquieting yet very dear--come into play.
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