Doctors ought to understand the symptoms of
any attack on vitality, and could tell me whether I am sick or sound."
He gazed at his sleeping wife. She had stretched her head out to him,
expressing in this way even while she slept the anxious tenderness of
love. Pauline seemed to look at him as she lay with her face turned
towards him in an attitude as full of grace as a young child's, with
her pretty, half-opened mouth held out towards him, as she drew her
light, even breath. Her little pearly teeth seemed to heighten the
redness of the fresh lips with the smile hovering over them. The red
glow in her complexion was brighter, and its whiteness was, so to
speak, whiter still just then than in the most impassioned moments of
the waking day. In her unconstrained grace, as she lay, so full of
believing trust, the adorable attractions of childhood were added to
the enchantments of love.
Even the most unaffected women still obey certain social conventions,
which restrain the free expansion of the soul within them during their
waking hours; but slumber seems to give them back the spontaneity of
life which makes infancy lovely. Pauline blushed for nothing; she was
like one of those beloved and heavenly beings, in whom reason has not
yet put motives into their actions and mystery into their glances.
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