FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Surely the phrase is ill considered, hurried "my
convalescence" would express the author's meaning better.]




VII


A last hour of vivid blue and gold glare; but now the twilight sheds
softly upon the darting jays, and only the little oval frames catch the
fleeting beams. I go to the miniatures. Amid the parliamentary faces,
all strictly garrotted with many-folded handkerchiefs, there is a metal
frame enchased with rubies and a few emeralds. And this _chef d'œuvre_
of antique workmanship surrounds a sharp, shrewdish, modern face, withal
pretty. Fair she is and thin.

She is a woman of thirty--no,--she is the woman of thirty. Balzac has
written some admirable pages on this subject; my memory of them is vague
and uncertain, although durable, as all memories of him must be. But
that marvellous story, or rather study, has been blunted in my knowledge
of this tiny face with the fine masses of hair drawn up from the neck
and arranged elaborately on the crown. There is no fear of plagiary; he
cannot have said all; he cannot have said what I want to say.

Looking at this face so mundane, so intellectually mundane, I see why a
young man of refined mind--a bachelor who spends at least a pound a day