or coloring, or form, or beauty. A subtle force of character--a
radiating magnetism--breathed from her whole being. When Zara Shulski
came into any assemblage of people conversation stopped and speculation
began.

She was rather tall and very slender; and yet every voluptuous curve of
her lithe body refuted the idea of thinness. Her head was small and her
face small, and short, and oval, with no wonderfully chiseled features,
only the skin was quite exceptional in its white purity--not the purity
of milk, but the purity of rich, white velvet, or a gardenia petal. Her
mouth was particularly curved and red and her teeth were very even, and
when she smiled, which was rarely, they suggested something of great
strength, though they were small and white. And now I am coming to her
two wonders, her eyes and her hair. At first you could have sworn the
eyes were black; just great pools of ink, or disks of black velvet, set
in their broad lids and shaded with jet lashes, but if they chanced to
glance up in the full light then you knew they were slate color, not a
tinge of brown or green--the whole iris was a uniform shade: strange,
slumberous, resentful eyes, under straight, thick, black brows, the
expression full of all sorts of meanings, though none of them peaceful
or calm. And from some far back Spanish-Jewess ancestress she probably
got that glorious head of red hair, the color of a ripe chestnut when it
falls from its shell, or a beautifully groomed bright bay horse. The
heavy plaits which were wound tightly round her head must have fallen
below her knees when they were undone. Her coiffure gave you the
impression that she never thought of fashion, nor changed its form of
dressing, from year to year. And the exquisite planting of the hair on
her forehead, as it waved back in broad waves, added to the perfection
of the Greek simplicity of the whole thing. Nothing about her had been
aided by conscious art. Her dress, of some black clinging stuff, was