discussion. If our tastes happen to be for blondness, brunettes simply
do not exist for us; and if we affect the slim and willowy in figure,
our contempt for the plump and rounded is too sincere for expression.
Usually the type we choose is one whose beauty is somewhat esoteric to
other eyes. We are well aware that photographs do it no justice, and
that the man in the street--who, strangely enough, we conceive as having
no eye for beauty--can see nothing in it. Thank Heaven, she is not the
type that any common eye can see. Heads are not turned in her wake as
she passes along. Her beauty is not "obvious." On the contrary, it is of
that rare and exquisite quality which only a few favoured ones can
apprehend--like the beauty of a Whistler or a Corot, and we have been
chosen to be its high-priest and evangelist. It is our secret, this
beautiful face that we love, and we wonder how any one can be found to
love the other faces. We even pity them, those rosy, rounded faces, with
their bright unmysterious eyes and straight noses and dimpled chins. How
fortunate for them that the secret of the beauty we love has been hidden
from their lovers. Sheer Bouguereau! Neither more nor less.

In fact, the beauty we affect is aggressively spiritual, and in so far
as beauty is demonstrably physical we dismiss it with disdain. Our
ideal, indeed, might be said to consist in a beauty which is beautiful
in spite of the body rather than by means of it; a beauty defiantly
clothed, so to say, in the dowdiest of fleshly garments--radiantly
independent of such carnal conditions as features or complexion. Our
ideal of figure might be said to be negative rather than positive, and
that "little sister" mentioned in Solomon's Song would bring us no
disappointment.

We are often heard to say that beauty consists chiefly, if not entirely,
in expression, that it is a transfiguration from within rather than a