You have noticed that peculiarity in your remembrance of some
persons? Perhaps you would find, if you looked closely, that in
that look or indelible gesture which your memory has caught there
lies some subtile hint of the tie between your soul and theirs.
Now, when Holmes had resolved coolly to weigh this woman, brain,
heart, and flesh, to know how much of a hindrance she would be,
he could only see her, with his artist's sense, as delicate a
bloom of colouring as eye could crave, in one immovable
posture,--as he had seen her once in some masquerade or tableau
vivant. June, I think it was, she chose to represent that
evening,--and with her usual success; for no woman ever knew more
thoroughly her material of shape or colour, or how to work it up.
Not an ill-chosen fancy, either, that of the moist, warm month.
Some tranced summer's day might have drowsed down into such a
human form by a dank pool, or on the thick grass-crusted meadows.
There was the full contour of the limbs hid under warm green
folds, the white flesh that glowed when you touched it as if some
smothered heat lay beneath, the snaring eyes, the sleeping face,
the amber hair uncoiled in a languid quiet, while yellow jasmines
deepened its hue into molten sunshine, and a great tiger-lily
laid its sultry head on her breast. June? Could June become
incarnate with higher poetic meaning than that which this woman
gave it? Mr. Kitts, the artist I told you of, thought not, and
fell in love with June and her on the spot, which passion became
quite unbearable after she had graciously permitted him to sketch
her,--for the benefit of Art. Three medical students and one
attorney, Miss Herne numbered as having been driven into a

state of dogged despair on that triumphal occasion. Mr. Holmes
may have quarrelled with the rendering, doubting to himself if