silent, looking at her.

She was standing directly in front of me, facing the canvas, that was
perfectly blank at present.

One hand rested on her hip, the other was raised and pressed to her
head, as when a person looks into distance, and the arm and elbow and
wrist traced a delicate curve against the dull grey square of London
window pane.

A twist of hair about as thick as my arm fell nearly to her waist. It
was decidedly not gold; that is, it did not suggest dye and the
Haymarket; but it was fair and curly, and seemed to hold light
imprisoned amongst it.

The figure was tall, and erred, perhaps, on the side of slightness.

Certainly it would have been too slight for those men whose scale of
admiration runs--so much in the pound. But the architecture of the form
was perfect. Each line was worthy of study in itself as a thing of
beauty, and the harmony of them all in the whole figure, whether it
moved or was at rest, gave an indefinable pleasure to the eye.

What a lovely thing it was this form, seeming to hold in itself the
light and pleasure and glow of life, as it stood, the only brilliant
thing in that cold north room.

And it might be mine, might have belonged to me long since if ... well
if ... that was just it.

I made a step forward and she turned.

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come," she said, laying her hand in mine. "I
want you so much."

We shook hands.

Although we were cousins, and had been engaged for the last two years,
this was our invariable method of greeting and leave-taking.

I had never kissed her, nor was I sure whether I ever really desired to.

There were times when the thought that precedes the impulse or the
impulse that gives birth to the thought came to me, but always when I
was away from her and not with her, and consequently the desire
culminated in nothing.

When I was actually beside her all my own feelings seemed suddenly held
in suspension, just as one stops with feet chained when one discovers
one has come abruptly upon sacred ground.

There had been times when I had hurried to this girl with words eager
to be spoken on my lips, and at the first sight of her they had died
unuttered on my tongue, just as words die into silence in the presence
of a somnambulist.

"Why am I specially necessary?" I said, smiling, as we stood in front
of the easel. "Will you let me paint you as Hyacinthus?" I went into a
fit of laughter. "My dear girl! anything to oblige you, but conside