richer than
their voices in music.

This was the fascination Beauchamp felt weaving round him. Would you,
that are separable from boys and mobs, and the object malignly called
the Briton, prefer the celestial singing of a woman to her excellently
talking? But not if it were given you to run in unison with her
genius of the tongue, following her verbal ingenuities and feminine
silk-flashes of meaning; not if she led you to match her fine quick
perceptions with more or less of the discreet concordance of the
violoncello accompanying the viol. It is not high flying, which usually
ends in heavy falling. You quit the level of earth no more than two
birds that chase from bush to bush to bill in air, for mutual delight to
make the concert heavenly. Language flowed from Renee in affinity with
the pleasure-giving laws that make the curves we recognize as beauty in
sublimer arts. Accept companionship for the dearest of the good things
we pray to have, and what equalled her! Who could be her rival!

Her girl's crown of irradiated Alps began to tremble over her dimly, as
from moment to moment their intimacy warmed, and Beauchamp saw the
young face vanishing out of this flower of womanhood. He did not see it
appearing or present, but vanishing like the faint ray in the rosier.
Nay, the blot of her faithlessness underwent a transformation: it
affected him somewhat as the patch cunningly laid on near a liquid
dimple in fair cheeks at once allures and evades a susceptible
attention.

Unused in his French of late, he stumbled at times, and she supplied
the needed phrase, taking no note of a blunder. Now men of sweet blood
cannot be secretly accusing or criticizing a gracious lady. Domestic
men are charged with thinking instantly of dark death when an ordinary
illness befalls them; and it may be so or not: but it is positive that
the gallant man of the world, if he is in the sensitive condition, and
not yet established as the lord of her, feels paralyzed in his masculine
sense of leadership the moment his lady assumes the initiative and
directs him: he gives up at once; and thus have many nimble-witted dames
from one clear start retained their advantage.

Concerning that glove: well! the handsomest young man in France wore the
glove of the loveliest woman. The loveliest? The very loveliest in the
purity of her French style--the woman to challenge England for a type of
beauty to eclipse her. It was possible to conceive her country wag