Permit me to introduce you to my heroine. Mind you, she is not
_my_ creation; only Heaven may produce her like, and but once.
She is well worth turning around to gaze at. Indeed I know more than
one fine gentleman who forgot the time of day, the important
engagement, or the trend of his thought, when she passed by.

She was coming forward, leaning against the wind and inclining to the
uncertain roll of the ship. A gray raincoat fitted snugly the
youthful rounded figure. Her hands were plunged into the pockets. You
may be sure that Mr. Robert noted through his half-closed eyelids
these inconsequent details. A tourist hat sat jauntily on the fine
light brown hair, that color which has no appropriate metaphor. (At
least, I have never found one, and I am _not_ in love with her
and _never_ was.) Warburton has described to me her eyes, so I
am positive that they were as heavenly blue as a rajah's sapphire.
Her height is of no moment. What man ever troubled himself about the
height of a woman, so long as he wasn't undersized himself? What
pleased Warburton was the exquisite skin. He was always happy with
his comparisons, and particularly when he likened her skin to the
bloomy olive pallor of a young peach. The independent stride was
distinguishingly American. Ah, the charm of these women who are my
countrywomen! They come, they go, alone, unattended, courageous
without being bold, self-reliant without being rude; inimitable. In
what an amiable frame of mind Nature must have been on the day she
cast these molds! But I proceed. The young woman's chin was tilted,
and Warburton could tell by the dilated nostrils that she was
breathing in the gale with all the joy of living, filling her healthy
lungs with it as that rare daughter of the Cyprian Isle might have
done as she sprang that morn from the jeweled Mediterranean spray,
that beggar's brooch of Neptune's.