Helena Kurcewiczowna

"Pan Jan pulled up his horse in mid-stride and the animal slid forward on all four hooves in a cloud of dust. It stood trembling, and the young soldier sat without a word, his hand at his cap, as if turned to stone. The small, gentle face that lifted towards him from under the girl's hood held him mesmerized, as if he'd been immobilized by a spell. He thought that he was looking at a painting, not a living woman, because he had never seen a face as beautiful as this one: framed in black braided hair, dark-eyed and delicate, with lips parted in wonder and startled as a doe. And so he sat, confused like a schoolboy, his hastily bared head as useless as an empty barrel. He knew that he should say something--a greeting of some kind. Or he could ask to have the falcon back. But no words came....He couldn't take his eyes off the young woman in the otter hood who seemed more like a figure lifted out of Greek mythology than a girl who might live in one of those crude fortress manors of the Ruthenian gentry which always reminded the young soldier of armories and barracks on the eve of siege."
~ from With Fire and Sword, by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Chapter 3, translated by W.S. Kuniczak