that lay in glinting waves with life and sparkle in every thread!

My Helen's face was expressive, piquantly irregular. The face into which I
looked lured me at moments with a haunting resemblance; but the brow was
lower and wider, the nose straighter, the mouth more subtly modelled. It
was a face Greek in its perfection, brightened by western force and
softened by some flitting touch of sensuousness and mysticism.

My Helen blushed easily, but otherwise had little colour. This Helen had a
baby's delicate skin, with rose-flushed cheeks and red, red lips. When she
spoke or smiled, she seemed to glow with an inner radiance that had
nothing to do with colour. And, oh, how beautiful! How beautiful!

I don't know how long I gazed.

I was trying to study the girl before me as if she had been merely a
fact--a statue, a picture. But here was none of the calm certainty of art;
I was in the grip of a power, a living charm as mighty as elusive, no more
to be fixed in words than are the splendours of sunset. Yet I saw the
vital harmonies of her figure, the grace of every exquisite curve--the
firm, strong line of her white throat, the gracious poise of her head, her
sweeping lashes.

I looked down at her hands; they were of marvellous shape and tint, but I
missed a little sickle-shaped scar from the joint of the left thumb. I
knew the story of that scar. I had seen the child Nelly run to her mother
when the knife slipped while she was paring a piece of cocoanut for the
Saturday pie-baking. That scar was part of Helen; I loved it. I felt a
sudden revolt against this goddess who usurped little Nelly's place, and
said that she had changed. Why was she looking at me? What did she want?