She awed always by the something that she did not say.
The school, for all the noble dames who presided over it--solemn, inexperienced owl-like conventionalists who insisted on the last tittle and jot of order and procedure--was a joke to Berenice.

She recognized the value of its social import, but even at fifteen and sixteen she was superior to it.

She was superior to her superiors and to the specimens of maidenhood--supposed to be perfect socially--who gathered about to hear her talk, to hear her sing, declaim, or imitate.

She was deeply, dramatically, urgently conscious of the value of her personality in itself, not as connected with any inherited social standing, but of its innate worth, and of the artistry and wonder of her body.

One of her chief delights was to walk alone in her room--sometimes at night, the lamp out, the moon perhaps faintly illuminating her chamber--and to pose and survey her body, and dance in some naive, graceful, airy Greek way a dance that was singularly free from sex consciousness--and yet was it?
She was conscious of her body--of every inch of it--under the ivory-white clothes which she frequently wore.