HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3)

by Patrick O'Brian

the unreasoning part of his mind evoked living images of these same charms, of that incredible grace of movement when it was truly spontaneous; and very soon his reasoning mind began to argue that this fault, too, was to be assimilated to the long catalogue of defects that he knew and accepted, defects that he felt to be outweighed if not cancelled by her qualities of wit and desperate courage: she was never dull, she was never cowardly. But moral considerations were irrelevant to Diana: in her, physical grace and dash took the place of virtue. The whole context was so different that an unchastity odious in another woman had what he could only call a purity in her: another purity: pagan, obviously – a purity from another code altogether. That grace had been somewhat blown upon to be sure, but there was enough and to spare; she had destroyed only the periphery; it was beyond her power to touch the essence of the thing, and that essence set her apart from any woman, any person, he had ever known.