eyes--large, full, very gray, very blue, vivid with all the glamour of her
personality, full of smiles and tears and spirituality and passion; one
instant, frankly innocent, they illuminated the face of a blonde Madonna;
the next, seen through the extraordinary, long, jet-black eye-lashes
underneath the finely pencilled black brows, they caressed, coquetted,
allured. I afterward found much of this girl's purely physical fascination
lay in this strange blending of English fairness with Andalusian tints,
though the abiding quality of her charm was surely in an exaltation of
spirit of which she might make the dullest conscious. As she stood looking
at Bob in my office that long-ago noon, gracefully at ease in a suit of
gray, with a gray-feathered turban on her head, and tiny lace bands at
neck and wrist, she was very exquisite, exceedingly dainty, and, though
Southerner of Southerners, very unlike the typical brunette girl who comes
out of Dixie land.

This girl who came into our office that July Saturday, just in time to
interfere with the outing Bob Brownley and I had laid out, and who was
destined to divert my chum's heretofore smooth-flowing river of existence
and turn it into an alternation of roaring rushes and deadly calms, was
truly the most exquisite creature one could conceive of, I know my
thought must have been Bob's too, for his eyes were riveted on her face.
She dropped the black lashes like a veil as she went on:

"Mr. Brownley, I have just come from Sands Landing. I am very anxious to
talk with you on a business matter. I have brought a letter to you from my
father. If you have other engagements I can wait until Monday, although,"
and the black veiling lashes lifted, showing the half-laughing,
half-pathetic eyes, "I wanted much to lay my business before you at the
earliest minute possible."