The Two-Bar Brand - Chapter 11 The Whole Duty of Woman

Joan waited for Holliwell and, waiting, began inevitably to regain her
strength. One evening as Wen Ho was spreading the table, Prosper
looked up from his writing to see a tall, gaunt girl clinging to the
door-jamb. She was dressed in the heavy clothes, which hung loose upon
her long bones, her throat was drawn up to support the sharpened and
hollowed face in which her eyes had grown very large and wistful. Her
hair was braided and wrapped across her brow, her long, strong hands,
smooth and only faintly brown, were thin, too, and curiously
expressive as they clung to the logs. She was a moving figure,
piteous, lovely, rather like some graceful mountain beast, its spirit
half-broken by wounds and imprisonment and human tending, but ready to
leap into a savagery of flight or of attack. They were wild, those
great eyes, as well as wistful. Prosper, looking suddenly up at them,
caught his breath. He put down his book as quietly as though she had
indeed been a wild, easily startled thing, and, suppressing the
impulse to rise, stayed where he was, leaning a trifle forward, his
hands on the arms of his chair.

Joan's eyes wandered curiously about the brilliant room and came to
him at last. Prosper met them, relaxed, and smiled.

"Come in and dine with me, Joan," he said. "Tell me how you like it."

She felt her way weakly to the second large chair and sat down facing
him across the hearth. The Chinaman's shadow, thrown strongly by the
lamp, ran to and fro between and across them. It was a strange scene
truly, and Prosper felt with exhilaration all its strangeness. This was
no Darby and Joan fireside; a wizard with his enchanted leopardess,
rather. He was half-afraid of Joan and of himself.