And the skin was ancient and brown, like old parchment.
The woman's form was tall and spare: and when she stood up to welcome me, I saw that she was straight as an arrow.

Could that voice of sweetness have issued from those lips of age?
Mild as they were, could they be the portals whence flowed such melody?
But the moment I saw her eyes, I no longer wondered at her voice: they were absolutely young--those of a woman of five-and-twenty, large, and of a clear gray.
Wrinkles had beset them all about; the eyelids themselves were old, and heavy, and worn; but the eyes were very incarnations of soft light.

She held out her hand to me, and the voice of sweetness again greeted me, with the single word, "Welcome." She set an old wooden chair for me, near the fire, and went on with her cooking.

A wondrous sense of refuge and repose came upon me.

I felt like a boy who has got home from school, miles across the hills, through a heavy storm of wind and snow.