greater part of their two years' absence would be spent in this place.
Ephie, too, had already had time to learn that, as far as music was
concerned, her business was not so much with finishing as with
beginning, and that the road to art, which she with all the rest must
follow, was a steep one. She might have found it still more arduous,
had Herr Becker, her master, not been a young man and very
impressionable. And Ephie never looked more charming than when, with
her rounded, dimpled arm raised in an exquisite curve, she leaned her
cheek against the glossy brown wood of her violin.

She was pretty with that untouched, infantine prettiness, before which
old and young go helplessly down. She was small and plump, with a
full, white throat and neck, and soft, rounded hands and wrists, that
were dimpled like a baby's. Her brown hair was drawn back from the low
forehead, but, both here and at the back of her neck, it broke into
innumerable little curls, which were much lighter in colour than the
rest. Her skin, faintly tinged, was as smooth as the skin of a cherry;
it had that exquisite freshness which is only to be found in a very
young girl, and is lovelier than the bloom on ripe fruit. Her dark
blue eyes were well opened, but the black lashes were so long and so
peculiarly straight that the eyes themselves were usually hidden, and
this made it all the more effective did she suddenly look up. Moulded
like wax, the small, upturned nose seemed to draw the top lip after
it; anyhow, the upper lip was too short to meet the lower, and
consequently, they were always slightly apart, in a kind of
questioning amaze. This mouth was the real beauty of the face: bright
red, full, yet delicate, arched like a bow, with corners that went in
and upwards, it belonged, by right of its absolute innocence, to the
face of a little child; and the thought was monstrous that nature and
the years would eventually combine to destroy so perfect a thing.