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Show 35 when I glanced her way and there she sat upon the edge of her bed exactly as I had often imagined her, legs crossed, combing her hair, naked and real, so real that I was shocked still. I gawked. I felt self-conscious, ashamed, fearful of being seen. But it was so quiet and still, as if we two were alone in the world, and she combed her hair as if the window wasn't there, combed her soft-yellow, butter-yellow hair as if the sun did not illumine her, as if she were alone in that Eden morning, and her tranquil absorption calmed me, released me from fear and shame, and for a moment, instead of a naked neighbor, I saw only a beautiful woman. I looked upon her with wonder, as if she were the first woman I had ever seen; I looked upon her with awe, looked upon her rounded belly and her rounded,,nippled, sun-fired breasts as if to memorize them forever. I had never seen anything so real, so immediate, so glorious. Dazed I stood there, full of a strange ringing. Then she dropped the comb aside and I looked down, nudged a rock with my toe and pretended to have found something valuable in the dust. But my eyes did not leave her, could not leave her, and I peered at her from under my brows. She sat there sleepily for a moment; then stood and opened her arms yawning to stretch for one glorious moment full and indolent in the sun. My head lifted: I gasped. It was almost as if, before this clumsy confused boy left her proximity forever, she must make him know the whole lithe line of woman, neck into shoulders and thin round arms, breasts and waist and belly, thighs, and at their joining her bush burning golden in the sun. How I concentrated, the better to learn her. She had risen from her tumbled bed as from a white-foamed sea, and now she moved on, moved out of my sight without once glancing out her window, as innocent as a naiad, as unconcerned as Eve, as proud as a queen who does not even have to recognize that windows exist. I had never felt like that before. I had difficulty breathing, a strange |