le gray, in deference
to her mourning garb; the dress was high over the shoulders, but cut
down squarely in front and behind, according to a fashion of the day.
The sleeves came to the elbow only; the long skirt was severely plain.
They had taken off their gloves, and the girl's beautiful arms were
conspicuous, as well as her round, full, white throat.

The American Venus is thin.

American girls are slight; they have visible collar-bones and elbows.
When they pass into the fullness of womanhood (if they pass at all), it
is suddenly, leaving no time for the beautiful pure virginal outlines
which made Anne Douglas an exception to her kind. Anne's walk was
entirely natural, her poise natural; yet so perfect were her
proportions that even Tante, artificial and French as she was, refrained
from the suggestions and directions as to step and bearing which
encircled the other pupils like an atmosphere.

The young girl's hair had been arranged by Helen's maid, under Helen's
own direction, in a plain Greek knot, leaving the shape of the head, and
the small ear, exposed; and as she stood by the piano, waiting, she
looked (as Helen had intended her to look) like some young creature from
an earlier world, startled and shy, yet too proud to run away.

They sang together; and in singing Anne recovered her self-possession.
Then Helen asked her to sing without accompaniment a little island
ballad which was one of her favorites, and leading her to the centre of
the room, left her there alone. Poor Anne! But, moved by the one desire
of pleasing Helen, she clasped her hands in simple child-like fashion,
and began to sing, her eyes raised slightly so as to look above the
faces of her audience. It was an old-fashioned ballad or chanson, in the
patois of the voyageurs, with a refrain in a minor key, and it told of
the vanishing of a certain petite Marie, and the sorrowing of her
mother--a common-place theme long drawn out, the constantly recurring
refrain, at first monotonous, becoming after a while sweet to the ear,
like the wash of small waves on a smooth beach. But it was the ending
upon which Helen relied for her effect. Suddenly the lament of the
long-winded mother ended, the time changed, and a verse followed
picturing the rapture of the lovers as they fled away in their
sharp-bowed boat, wing and wing, over the blue lake. Anne sang this as
though inspired; she forgot her audience, and sang as she had always
sung it on the island f