The imagery of the girl
The author uses sight imager to describe the girl’s physical appearance in the cold morning and how she prepared herself for the day. The author writes, “Niels watched her as he had watched Ellen. The morning was cold, and the girl was warmly dressed. But there was a difference. None of the silks to-day; but no sheep-skin, either. She wore a multitude of ragged things, each, like those of her father, too thin for the season, but together calculated to keep the cold out, at least.”
The woman's hair
The description of the woman's hair is used to measure her youthfulness by Niels. The author says, “Niels looked back at her, without speaking. He noticed that her abundant, straw-yellow hair was no longer so severely brushed down. It had little waves and ripples in it; a looser way of doing it up had given it the freedom to follow its natural bend. He remembered how, as a girl, she had seemed to him singularly mature; now that in age she was a woman, she seemed almost girlish."
Romance imagery
The feelings of a man touching a woman for the first time are intense and confusing at the same time. The first touch on a woman's body is described using romance imagery. The author writes, “He had done what he had never done before: he had touched a woman: the touch had set his blood aflame. He almost hated the woman for what she had done to him. He wanted oblivion: he wanted death-in-life, and she had kindled in him that he had hardly known to exist: she had given a meaning and a direction to stirrings within him, to strange, incomprehensible impulses.”
