life of its owner upon an abnormal plane. There are millions of pretty
women, and billions of personable men, but the man or woman of entire
physical beauty may cross one's pathway only once in a lifetime--or not
at all. In the latter case it is natural to doubt the absolute truth of
the rumours that the thing exists. The abnormal creature seems a mere
freak of nature and may chance to be angel, criminal, total insipidity,
virago or enchanter, but let such an one enter a room or appear in the
street, and heads must turn, eyes light and follow, souls yearn or
envy, or sink under the discouragement of comparison. With the complete
harmony and perfect balance of the singular thing, it would be folly for
the rest of the world to compete. A human being who had lived in poverty
for half a lifetime, might, if suddenly endowed with limitless fortune,
retain, to a certain extent, balance of mind; but the same creature
having lived the same number of years a wholly unlovely thing, suddenly
awakening to the possession of entire physical beauty, might find the
strain upon pure sanity greater and the balance less easy to preserve.
The relief from the conscious or unconscious tension bred by the sense
of imperfection, the calm surety of the fearlessness of meeting in
any eye a look not lighted by pleasure, would be less normal than the
knowledge that no wish need remain unfulfilled, no fancy ungratified.
Even at sixteen Betty was a long-limbed young nymph whose small head,
set high on a fine slim column of throat, might well have been crowned
with the garland of some goddess of health and the joy of life. She was
light and swift, and being a creature of long lines and tender curves,
there was pleasure in the mere seeing her move. The cut of her spirited
lip, and delicate nostril, made for a profile at which one turned to
look more than once, despite one's self. Her hair was soft and black and
repeated its colour in the extravagant lashes of her childhood, which
made mysterious the changeful dense blue of her eyes. They were eyes
with laughter in them and pride, and a suggestion of many deep things