pleases him to give, should set down
plainly at the end the result, the often mysterious and unexpected
whole, which the elements he has described have, in some occult manner,
combined to produce. "There was an enchantment in her expression,"
"There was an irresistible sweetness about her;" these phrases tell more
than the most minute record of hue and outline; they place the reader
where he would be were the living, breathing presence before him,
instead of the mere printed page.

But in the case of Garda Thorne it could have been said that she had not
only brilliant beauty, but the loveliness which does not always
accompany it. There was sufficient regularity in her face to keep from
it the term irregular; but it had also all the changing expressions, all
the spirit, all the sweetness, which faces whose features are not by
rule often possess. She had undoubtedly a great charm, a charm which no
one had as yet analyzed; she was not a girl who turned one's thoughts
towards analysis, one was too much occupied in simply admiring her. She
was as open as the day, her frankness was wonderful; it would have been
said of her by every one that she had an extraordinary simplicity, were
it not that the richness of her beauty threw over her a sort of
sumptuousness which did not accord with the usual image of pure, rather
meagre limpidity called up by the use of that word.

Evert Winthrop, beholding her for the first time in the little Episcopal
church of Gracias, had said to himself that she was the most beautiful
girl (viewing the matter impersonally) whom he had ever seen.
Impersonally, because he would have set down his personal preference as
decidedly for something less striking, for eyes of blue rather than
black, eyes which should be not so much lustrous as gentle, for smooth
hair of pale gold, a forehead and eyebrows like those of a Raphael
Madonna. He was sure, also, that he much preferred slenderness; even a
certain virginal thinness and awkwardness he could accept, it might be
part of the charm. A friend of his, a lady older than himself, upon
hearing him express these sentiments not long before, had remarked that
they shed a good deal of light backward over his past. When he asked her
what she meant, she added that a liking for little wild flowers in a man
of the world of his age, and an indifference to tea-roses, did not so
much indicate a natural simplicity of taste as something quite apart
from that--too long an acqu