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Ideala by Sarah Grand
page 5 of 246 (02%)
were ugly they drew attention to them, if pretty they hid their
beauty; yet she wore half-a-dozen worthless ones habitually for the
love of those who gave them, to her. It was said that she was striking
in appearance, but cold and indifferent in manner. Some, on whom she
had never turned her eyes, called her repellent. But it was noticed
that men who took her down to dinner, or had any other opportunity of
talking to her, were never very positive in, what they said of her
afterwards. She made every one, men and women alike, feel, and she did
it unconsciously. Without effort, without eccentricity, without
anything you could name or define, she impressed you, and she held you
--or at least she held _me_, always--expectant. Nothing about her ever
seemed to be of the present. When she talked she made you wonder what
her past had been, and when she was silent you began to speculate
about her future. But she did not talk much as a rule, and when she
did speak it was always some subject of interest, some fact that she
wanted to ascertain accurately, or some beautiful idea, that occupied
her; she had absolutely no small talk for any but her most intimate
friends, whom she was wont at times to amuse with an endless stock of
anecdotes and quaint observations; and this made people of limited
capacity hard on her. Some of these called her a cold, ambitious,
unsympathetic woman; and perhaps, from their point of view, she was
so. She certainly aspired to something far above them, and had nothing
but scorn for the dead level of dull mediocrity from which they would
not try to rise.

"To be distinguished among these people," she once said, "it is only
necessary to have one's heart

Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
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