Boldwood looked at her -- not slily, critically, or
understandingly, but blankly at gaze, in the way a
reaper looks up at a passing train -- as something foreign
to his element, and but dimly understood. To Bold-
wood women had been remote phenomena rather than
necessary complements -- comets of such uncertain
aspect, movement, and permanence, that whether
their orbits were as geometrical, unchangeable, and
as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely erratic
as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it
his duty to consider.
He saw her black hair, her correct facial curves
and profile, and the roundness of her chin and throat.
He saw then the side of her eyelids, eyes, and lashes,
and the shape of her ear. Next he noticed her figure,
her skirt, and the very soles of her shoes.
Boldwood thought her beautiful, but wondered
whether he was right in his thought, for it seemed
impossible that this romance in the flesh, if so sweet
as he imagined, could have been going on long without
creating a commotion of delight among men, and pro-
voking more inquiry than Bathsheba had done, even
though that was not a little.
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