hat, if ever I should press my
lips upon them that they would be slightly cold--not icily, not without
a touch of human heat, but, as they say of baths, with the chill off. I
seemed to feel chilled at the end of my lips when I looked at her...

No, Leonora always appeared to me at her best in a blue tailor-made.
Then her glorious hair wasn't deadened by her white shoulders. Certain
women's lines guide your eyes to their necks, their eyelashes, their
lips, their breasts. But Leonora's seemed to conduct your gaze always to
her wrist. And the wrist was at its best in a black or a dog-skin glove
and there was always a gold circlet with a little chain supporting a
very small golden key to a dispatch box. Perhaps it was that in which
she locked up her heart and her feelings.

Anyhow, she sat down opposite me and then, for the first time, she paid
any attention to my existence. She gave me, suddenly, yet deliberately,
one long stare. Her eyes too were blue and dark and the eyelids were so
arched that they gave you the whole round of the irises. And it was a
most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse
had looked at me. I seemed to perceive the swift questions chasing each
other through the brain that was behind them. I seemed to hear the brain
ask and the eyes answer with all the simpleness of a woman who was a
good hand at taking in qualities of a horse--as indeed she was. "Stands
well; has plenty of room for his oats behind the girth. Not so much in
the way of shoulders," and so on. And so her eyes asked: "Is this man
trustworthy in money matters; is he likely to try to play the lover; is
he likely to let his women be troublesome? Is he, above all, likely to
babble about my affairs?"

And, suddenly, into those cold, slightly defiant, almost defensive china
blue orbs, there came a warmth, a tenderness, a friendly recognition...
oh, it was very charming and very touching--and quite mortifying. It was
the look of a mother to her son, of a sister to her brother. It implied
trust; it implied the want of any necessity for barriers. By God, she
looked at me as if I were an invalid--as any kind woman may look at a
poor chap in a bath chair. And, yes, from that day forward she always
treated me and not Florence as if I were the invalid. Why, she would
run after me with a rug upon chilly days. I suppose, therefore, that her
eyes had made a favourable answer. Or, perhaps, it wasn't a favourable
answer. And t