Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes by Arnold Bennett
page 33 of 254 (12%)
page 33 of 254 (12%)
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I'm--'
He stopped, for the insisting lady had entered. It was Camilla. He jumped up. Never before in his career had he been so astounded, staggered, charmed, enchanted, dazzled, and completely silenced. 'Miss Payne?' he gasped after a prolonged pause. Simon Shawn effaced himself. 'Yes, Mr. Hugo.' 'Won't you sit down?' The singular prevalence of beautiful women in England is only appreciated properly by Englishmen who have lived abroad, and these alone know also that in no other country is beauty wasted by women as it is wasted in England. Camilla was beautiful, and supremely beautiful; she was tall, well and generously formed, graceful, fair, with fine eyes and fine dark chestnut hair; her absolutely regular features had the proud Tennysonian cast. But the coldness of Tennysonian damsels was not hers. Whether she had Latin blood in her veins, or whether Nature had peculiarly gifted her out of sheer caprice, she possessed in a high degree that indescribable demeanour, at once a defiance and a surrender, a question and an answer, a confession and a denial, which is the universal weapon of women of Latin race in the battle of the sexes, but of which Englishwomen seem to be almost deprived. 'I am Eve!' say the |
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