What did men see when they looked at Mildred
Gower? Usually, when men look at a woman, they
have a hazy, either pleasant or unpleasant, sense of
something feminine. That, and nothing more. Afterward,
through some whim or some thrust from chance
they may see in her, or fancy they see in her, the thing
feminine that their souls--it is always ``soul''--most
yearns after. But just at first glance, so colorless or
conventionally colored is the usual human being, the
average woman--indeed every woman but she who is
exceptional--creates upon man the mere impression of
pleasant or unpleasant petticoats. In the exceptional
woman something obtrudes. She has astonishing hair,
or extraordinary eyes, or a mouth that seems to draw a
man like a magnet; or it is the allure of a peculiar
smile or of a figure whose sinuosities as she moves
seem to cause a corresponding wave-disturbance in
masculine nerves. Further, the possession of one of
these signal charms usually causes all her charms to
have more than ordinary potency. The sight of the
man is so bewitched by the one potent charm that he
sees the whole woman under a spell.

Mildred Gower, of the medium height and of a
slender and well-formed figure, had a face of the kind
that is called lovely; and her smile, sweet, dreamy,
revealing white and even teeth, gave her loveliness
delicate animation. She had an abundance of hair, neither
light nor dark; she had a fine clear skin. Her eyes,