of. As I added virtue after virtue to the female monster in my
mind, and the result remained still inanimate and unalluring, I
realised that the lack I was conscious of was not any new
perfection, but just one or two honest human imperfections. And
this, try as I would, was just what I could not imagine.

For, if you reflect a moment, you will see that, while it is easy
to choose what virtues we would have our wife possess, it is all
but impossible to imagine those faults we would desire in her,
which I think most lovers would admit add piquancy to the loved
one, that fascinating wayward imperfection which paradoxically
makes her perfect.

Faults in the abstract are each and all so uninviting, not to say
alarming, but, associated with certain eyes and hair and tender
little gowns, it is curious how they lose their terrors; and, as
with vice in the poet's image, we end by embracing what we began
by dreading. You see the fault becomes a virtue when it is hers,
the treason prospers; wherefore, no doubt, the impossibility of
imagining it. What particular fault will suit a particular
unknown girl is obviously as difficult to determine as in what
colours she will look her best.

So, I say, I plied my brains in vain for that becoming fault. It
was the same whether I considered her beauty, her heart, or her
mind. A charming old Italian writer has laid down the canons of
perfect feminine beauty with much nicety in a delicious
discourse, which, as he delivered it in a sixteenth- century
Florentine garden to an audience of beautiful and noble ladies,
an audience not too large to be intimate and not too small to be