elter
behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.

His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist should,
at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of his work, and he
found himself looking furtively at this unknown dame.

Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face. This face was
charming!

He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face with
large dark eyes and soft lips. A black 'picture' hat concealed the hair;
her figure was lightly poised against the back of the bench, her knees
were crossed; the tip of a patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her
skirt. There was something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the
person of this lady, but young Jolyon's attention was chiefly riveted by
the look on her face, which reminded him of his wife. It was as though
its owner had come into contact with forces too strong for her. It
troubled him, arousing vague feelings of attraction and chivalry. Who
was she? And what doing there, alone?

Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and shy,
found in the Regent's Park, came by on their way to lawn tennis, and he
noted with disapproval their furtive stares of admiration. A loitering
gardener halted to do something unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass;
he, too, wanted an excuse for peeping. A gentleman, old, and, by his
hat, a professor of horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her
long and stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.

With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation. She
looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who passed
would look at her like that.

Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds out to
men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the 'devil's beauty' so highly
prized among the first Forsytes of the land; neither was it of that
type, no less adorable, associated with the box of chocolate; it was not
of the spiritually passionate, or passionately spiritual order, peculiar
to house-decoration and modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to
the playwright material for the production of the interesting and
neurasthenic figure, who commits suicide in the last act.

In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its sensuous
purity, this woman's face reminded him of Titian's 'Heavenly Love,' a
reproduction of which hung over the sideboard in his dining-room. And
her attraction seemed to be in this soft