The cunning intelligences of that impulse had decked her out with
every attractiveness as though they had taken thought to confound
all masculine resistance; to sweep into their service those
refractory units that withheld themselves from the common
purpose. She was lovely, as the aged Major Carrington had
uttered it - great violet eyes in a delicate skin sown with gold
flecks, a skin so delicate that one felt that a kiss would tear
it!

I do not know from what source I have that expression but it
attaches itself, out of my memory of descriptive phrases, to
Madame Barras. And it extends itself as wholly descriptive of
her. You will say that the long and short of this is that I was
in love with Madame Barras, but I point you a witness in Major
Carrington.

He had the same impressions, and he had but one passion in his
life, a distant worship of my sister that burned steadily even
here at the end of life. During the few evenings that Madame
Barras had been in to dinner with us, he sat in his chair beyond
my sister in the drawing-room, perfect in his early-Victorian
manner, while Madame Barras and I walked on the great terrace, or
sat outside.

One had a magnificent sweep of the world, at night, from that
terrace. It looked out over the forest of pines to the open sea.

Madame Barras confessed to the pull of this vista. She asked me
at what direction the Atlantic entered, and when she knew, she
kept it always in her sight.