and pouting--glistened with the brilliant smoothness of a pomegranate
flower when the dew is clinging. Her eyes--the opium-eaters of Stamboul
never dreamed of their peers among the bevies of hachis-houris. They
were of the very darkest hazel; one moment sleeping lazily under their
long lashes, like a river under leaves of water-lilies; the next,
sparkling like the same stream when the sunlight is splintered on its
ripples into carcanets of diamonds. When they chose to speak, not all
the orators that have rounded periods since Isocrates could match their
eloquence; when it was their will to guard a secret, they met you with
the cold, impenetrable gaze that we attribute to the mighty mother,
Cybèle. Even a philosopher might have been interested--on purely
psychological grounds, of course--in watching the thoughts as they rose
one by one to the surface of those deep, clear wells (was truth at the
bottom of them?--I doubt), like the strange shapes of beauty that
reveal themselves to seamen, coyly and slowly, through the purple calm
of the Indian Sea.

Twice I have chosen a watery simile; but I know no other element
combining, as her glances did, liquid softness with lustre.

When near her, you were sensible of a strange, subtle, intoxicating
perfume, very fragrant, perfectly indefinable, which clung, not only to
her dress, but to every thing belonging to her. From what flowers it was
distilled no artist in essences alive could have told. I incline to
think that, like the "birk" in the ghost's garland,

"They were not grown on earthly bank,
Nor yet on earthly sheugh."

Guy took Miss Bellasys in to dinner, and I found myself placed on her