thestreep: “My good woman, we can’t see youhere without being alarmed for your safety. A stronger sq
thestreep: “My good woman, we can’t see youhere without being alarmed for your safety. A stronger squall—“She turned to look at him—or asit seemed to Charles, through him. It was not so much what was positively in that face whichremained with him after that first meeting, but all that was not as he had expected; for theirs was an agewhen the favored feminine look was the demure, the obedient, the shy. Charles felt immediately as if hehad trespassed; as if the Cobb belonged to that face, and not to the Ancient Borough of Lyme. It wasnot a pretty face, like Ernestina’s. It was certainly not a beautiful face, by any period’s standard ortaste. But it was an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. Its sorrow welledout of it as purely, naturally andunstoppably as water out of a woodland spring. There was no artifice there, no hypocrisy, no hysteria, nomask; and above all, no sign of madness. The madness was in the empty sea, the empty horizon, the lack ofreason for such sorrow; as if the spring was natural in itself, but unnatural in welling from a desert. -The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles -- source link