was never weary of descanting on the extraordinary perfection of her
beauty.

"I had no idea of it," he said, "till I began to look at her with an eye
to reproducing line for line and curve for curve. Her face is the most
exquisite piece of modeling that ever came from creative hands. Not
a line without meaning, not a hair's breadth that is not admirably
finished. And then her mouth! It 's as if a pair of lips had been shaped
to utter pure truth without doing it dishonor!" Later, after he had been
working for a week, he declared if Miss Light were inordinately plain,
she would still be the most fascinating of women. "I 've quite forgotten
her beauty," he said, "or rather I have ceased to perceive it as
something distinct and defined, something independent of the rest of
her. She is all one, and all consummately interesting!"

"What does she do--what does she say, that is so remarkable?" Rowland
had asked.

"Say? Sometimes nothing--sometimes everything. She is never the same.
Sometimes she walks in and takes her place without a word, without a
smile, gravely, stiffly, as if it were an awful bore. She hardly looks
at me, and she walks away without even glancing at my work. On other
days she laughs and chatters and asks endless questions, and pours out
the most irresistible nonsense. She is a creature of moods; you can't
count upon her; she keeps observation on the stretch. And then, bless
you, she has seen such a lot! Her talk is full of the oddest allusions!"

"It is altogether a very singular type of young lady," said Rowland,
after the visit which I have related at length. "It may be a charm, but
it is certainly not the orthodox charm of marriageable maidenhood, the