gan to appear as a serial in _Harper's Monthly_, January
1894, Mr. Henry James prophesied that it would prove to be a
glorification of "the long leg and the twentieth year." The prophecy was
soon verified. At the outset, indeed, it seemed as if the glorification
were to be, not so much of the long leg, as of the large and shapely
foot. The whole story rested for a while on one of Trilby's feet. We say
one, for it was only one of them--the left one--that Little Billee
immortalized by drawing on the wall of the studio in the Place St.
Anatole des Arts; but they were equally perfect. As the young woman who
had the happiness of standing on this foot proclaims, kicking off one of
the big slippers in which she is introduced to us, "It's the handsomest
foot in all Paris: there's only one in all Paris to match it, and here
it is"--and off goes the other slipper. The sketch of it that proves
Little Billee already a master of his art is not shown till near the end
of the book; and neither this nor Mr. du Maurier's own portrait of the
_pieds nus_ on page 21 fully realizes one's notion of the thing's
unapproached perfection.

As we have said, the whole story rests for a while on one of these
handsome feet; but the novelist manages at last to free his neck from
the thraldom of the "slim, straight, rosy heel, clean-cut and smooth as
the back of a razor," and proceeds to gratify our curiosity to know
something about the strange being who poked about the studios in the
Quartier Latin in the early fifties, bare-headed, and wearing a big,
military coat with epaulets, which she could throw off when she posed
for the _ensemble_ as easily as she could kick off the loose slippers
when only her foot was desired as a model. It will be seen that Trilby
was not a woman of any social standing. Her father was an educated
Irishman, her mother (his wife) a pretty barmaid. They both were dead,
and she herself was a professional model.

Two things about her were equally marvellous: one was her foot, the
other her voice--an organ of surprising power, range and sweetness. No
less extraordinary, perhaps, was the trick that nature had played upon
her, by coupling so glorious a voice with an ear that could not
distinguish one note from another--could scarcely tell a bass from a
treble, and permitted her to sing so badly that her hearers either
stopped their ears, laughed in her face, or bolted from the room. The
American song "Ben Bolt" was the one she li