tually gifted and eligible to boot, without planning to
introduce them?"

About Clair Conway's beauty there admitted little dispute, though it was
complex to apprehend. Every feature was in drawing, but nowhere
arrogantly classical. A faint scumbling, which poets might have
described as the mists of youth's Aurora, endowed the face with a
soothing indefinitude. In effect, it acted like dew on summer turf which
drapes the emerald crispness in silver sheen. The only obvious
irregularity was a contumacious tooth which peeped impertinently over
the centre of the lower lip, dimpling its fulness with a tiny shadow. In
that dimple lurked the most fascinating lisp that was ever modelled--a
lisp not sufficiently full-bodied to disturb the accent, but strong
minded enough to put stress upon it. Her figure was in the bud. It had
small natural curves, which hinted at feminality, but it was fitted far
too well; the tailor had forced a masculine exactness which was foreign
to the subject and to the statuesque creasings of her neck.

To me from her youth she had always been a centre of interest. She was
like some half-studied volume of _belles lettres_--full of temptations,
subtleties, prose melodies, poetic realisms. Her speech was fragile, and
her words, subdued by their passage through the dimple, lagged now and
then. Her expression was seldom either animated or pensive; never did
green and yellow melancholy chase the vermeil from her cheek, seldom did
excitement heighten it. She was as serene as innocence and as
clean-eyed, the very woman I would have worshipped had youth quickened
in my veins.

"I knew Philip would admire her," my sister related, when describing the
kettledrum she had given in furtherance of her scheme, "so I introduced
them at once!"

"Lorraine's fancies are protean, my good Sarah. They are the result of
appreciative faculty. Someone--I think Emerson--says that 'love is a
mutual perception of the same truth,' or something to that effect.
Unfortunately, as the artist soul is always in pursuit of new truths,
the deduction is perilous."

"But," argued she, "Clair is the white light of truth itself. One might
go about studying nuances, contrasting tones, and yet value that truth
eternally. I expected Mr Lorraine would appreciate her for this reason.
He is a colour theorist, and with his knowledge of values he can gauge
the true beauty of white light."

"Well, and the result?" I questioned, with interest; for