appearance was a refutation of the young man's ballroom
generalizations.

The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in
spite of her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest
charm lay in her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some
haunting, ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance
of eyes which told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So
seldom did she raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless
were her glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes
were reserved for some occult contemplation. Any man of genius and
feeling must have felt strangely attracted by her gentleness and
silence. If the mind sought to explain the mysterious problem of a
constant inward turning from the present to the past, the soul was no
less interested in initiating itself into the secrets of a heart proud
in some sort of its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in
keeping with these thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women
who have very long hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The
marvelous fineness of her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a
quick sensibility which could be seen yet more unmistakably in her
features; there was the same minute and wonderful delicacy of finish
in them that the Chinese artist gives to his fantastic figures.
Perhaps her neck was rather too long, but such necks belong to the
most graceful type, and suggest vague affinities between a woman's
head and the magnetic curves of the serpent. Leave not a single one of
the thousand signs and tokens by which the most inscrutable character
betrays itself to an observer of human nature, he has but to watch
carefully the little movements of a woman's head, the ever-varying
expressive turns and curves of her neck and throat, to read her
nature.