medallion-like, where the swan-like throat joined the graceful
shoulder, gave to her dress an appearance of opulence and splendour
that betokened how much the ladies of Byzantium had borrowed from the
fashions of the Oriental world. Nothing could exceed the lightness of
her form, rounded, it is true, but slight and girlish, and the high
instep, with the slender foot, so well set off by the embroidered
sandal, would have suited such dances as those in which the huntress
nymphs of Delos moved around Diana. The natural expression of her
face, if countenance so mobile and changeful had one expression more
predominant than another, appeared to be irresistibly arch and joyous,
as of one full of youth and conscious of her beauty; yet, if a cloud
came over the face, nothing could equal the thoughtful and deep
sadness of the dark abstracted eyes, as if some touch of higher and
more animated emotion--such as belongs to pride, or courage, or
intellect--vibrated on the heart. The colour rose, the form dilated,
the lip quivered, the eye flashed light, and the mirthful expression
heightened almost into the sublime. Yet, lovely as Cleonice was deemed
at Byzantium, lovelier still as she would have appeared in modern
eyes, she failed in what the Greeks generally, but especially the
Spartans, deemed an essential of beauty--in height of stature.
Accustomed to look upon the virgin but as the future mother of a race
of warriors, the Spartans saw beauty only in those proportions which
promised a robust and stately progeny, and the reader may remember
the well-known story of the opprobrious reproaches, even, it is said,
accompanied with stripes, which the Ephors addressed to a Spartan king
for presuming to make choice of a wife below the ordinary stature.
Cleonice was small and delicate, rather like the Peri of the Persian
than the sturdy Grace of the Dorian. But her beauty was her least
charm. She had all that feminine fascination of manner, wayward,
varying, inexpressible, yet irresistible, which seizes hold of the