She heard a pleasant
voice in every breeze, and in every bird's note seemed to lurk a
joy.
Her face had latterly changed with changing states of mind,
continually fluctuating between beauty and ordinariness, according as
the thoughts were gay or grave. One day she was pink and flawless;
another pale and tragical. When she was pink she was feeling less
than when pale; her more perfect beauty accorded with her less
elevated mood; her more intense mood with her less perfect beauty.
It was her best face physically that was now set against the south
wind.
The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet
pleasure somewhere, which pervades all life, from the meanest to the
highest, had at length mastered Tess. Being even now only a young
woman of twenty, one who mentally and sentimentally had not finished
growing, it was impossible that any event should have left upon her
an impression that was not in time capable of transmutation.
And thus her spirits, and her thankfulness, and her hopes, rose
higher and higher. She tried several ballads, but found them
inadequate; till, recollecting the psalter that her eyes had so often
wandered over of a Sunday morning before she had eaten of the tree
of knowledge, she chanted: "O ye Sun and Moon .
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