knowing it, the most injurious suspicions; and always holding her course,
passionless, stainless, fearless, charmless! It is a little figure in
which, after all, if you can get the right point of view, there is
something rather striking.

By way of contrast, there is a lovely English girl, with eyes as shy as
violets, and a voice as sweet! She has a sweet Gainsborough head, and a
great Gainsborough hat, with a mighty plume in front of it, which makes a
shadow over her quiet English eyes. Then she has a sage-green robe,
"mystic, wonderful," all embroidered with subtle devices and flowers, and
birds of tender tint; very straight and tight in front, and adorned
behind, along the spine, with large, strange, iridescent buttons. The
revival of taste, of the sense of beauty, in England, interests me
deeply; what is there in a simple row of spinal buttons to make one
dream--to _donnor a rever_, as they say here? I think that a great
aesthetic renascence is at hand, and that a great light will be kindled
in England, for all the world to see. There are spirits there that I
should like to commune with; I think they would understand me.

This gracious English maiden, with her clinging robes, her amulets and
girdles, with something quaint and angular in her step, her carriage
something mediaeval and Gothic, in the details of her person and dress,
this lovely Evelyn Vane (isn't it a beautiful name?) is deeply,
delightfully picturesque. She is much a woman--elle _est bien femme_, as
they say here; simpler, softer, rounder, richer than the young girls I
spoke of just now. Not much talk--a great, sweet silence. Then the
violet eye--the very eye itself seems to blush; the great shadowy hat,
making the brow so quiet; the strange, clinging, clutching, pictured
raiment! As I say, it is a very gracious, tender type. She has her
brother with her, who is a beautiful, fair-haired, gray-eyed young