4.

The Dorothy Who Did Not Understand


For now had come to Jurgen and the Centaur a gold-haired woman,
clothed all in white, and walking alone. She was tall, and lovely
and tender to regard: and hers was not the red and white comeliness
of many ladies that were famed for beauty, but rather it had the
even glow of ivory. Her nose was large and high in the bridge, her
flexible mouth was not of the smallest: and yet whatever other
persons might have said, to Jurgen this woman's countenance was in
all things perfect. Perhaps this was because he never saw her as she
was. For certainly the color of her eyes stayed a matter never
revealed to him: gray, blue or green, there was no saying: they
varied as does the sea; but always these eyes were lovely and
friendly and perturbing.

Jurgen remembered that: for Jurgen saw this was Count Emmerick's
second sister, Dorothy la Desiree, whom Jurgen very long ago (a many
years before he met Dame Lisa and set up in business as a
pawnbroker) had hymned in innumerable verses as Heart's Desire.

"And this is the only woman whom I ever loved," Jurgen remembered,
upon a sudden. For people cannot always be thinking of these
matters.