[00:01.43]Passage 4. A Little Girl

[00:05.59]Sitting on a grassy grave, beneath one of the windows of the church, was a little girl.

[00:14.23]With her head bent back she was gazing up at the sky and singing,

[00:19.37]while one of her little hands was pointing to a tiny cloud

[00:24.08]that hovered like a golden feather above her head.

[00:28.56]The sun, which had suddenly become very bright, shining on her glossy hair,

[00:35.01]gave it a metallic luster, and it was difficult to say what was the color, dark bronze or black.

[00:43.26]So completely absorbed was she in watching the cloud to which her strange song or incantation seemed addressed,

[00:52.40]that she did not observe me when I rose and went towards her.

[00:57.00]Over her head, high up in the blue,

[01:00.50]a lark that was soaring towards the same gauzy cloud was singing, as if in rivalry.

[01:07.09]As I slowly approached the child,

[01:10.05]I could see by her forehead, which in the sunshine seemed like a globe of pearl,

[01:16.28]and especially by her complexion, that she uncommonly lovely.

[01:22.19]Her eyes, which at one moment seemed blue-gray, at another violet,

[01:27.33]were shaded by long black lashes, curving backward in a most peculiar way,

[01:33.25]and these matched in hue her eyebrows,

[01:36.53]and the tresses that were tossed about her tender throat were quivering in the sunlight.

[01:42.43]All this I did not take in at once;

[01:45.28]for at first I could see nothing but those quivering, glittering, changeful eyes turned up into my face.

[01:53.26]Gradually the other features, especially the sensitive full-lipped mouth,

[01:59.06]grew upon me as I stood silently gazing.

[02:02.45]Here seemed to me a more perfect beauty than had ever come to me in my loveliest dreams of beauty.

[02:09.79]Yet it was not her beauty so much as the look she gave me that fascinated me, melted me.