For such was this poor scribe, and such he had been from a child, until
this beautiful lady first swam into his ken.
She was so tall that her eyes seemed almost on a level with mine, but
she moved with the alert lightness and grace of a small person. Her
thick, heavy hair was of a dark coppery brown, her complexion clear and
pale, her eyebrows and eyelashes black, her eyes a light bluish gray.
Her nose was short and sharp, and rather tilted at the tip, and her red
mouth large and very mobile; and here, deviating from my preconceived
ideal, she showed me how tame a preconceived ideal can be. Her perfect
head was small, and round her long, thick throat two slight creases went
parallel, to make what French sculptors call _le collier de Venus;_ the
skin of her neck was like a white camellia, and slender and
square-shouldered as she was, she did not show a bone. She was that
beautiful type the French define as _la fausse maigre_, which does not
mean a "false, thin woman."
She seemed both thoughtful and mirthful at once, and genial as I had
never seen any one genial before--a person to confide in, to tell all
one's troubles to, without even an introduction! When she laughed she
showed both top and bottom teeth, which were perfect, and her eyes
nearly closed, so that they could no longer be seen for the thick lashes
that fringed both upper and under eyelids; at which time the expression
of her face was so keenly, cruelly sweet that it went through one like a
knife.
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