fidences had made me so curious to meet. It
was in the early days of May. The air was pure, the weather serene; the
verdure of the first foliage, the fragrance of spring formed a setting
for this creature of sorrow. As I then saw Honorine I understood
Octave's passion and the truthfulness of his description, 'A heavenly
flower!'

"Her pallor was what first struck me by its peculiar tone of white--for
there are as many tones of white as of red or blue. On looking at the
Countess, the eye seemed to feel that tender skin, where the blood
flowed in the blue veins. At the slightest emotion the blood mounted
under the surface in rosy flushes like a cloud. When we met, the
sunshine, filtering through the light foliage of the acacias, shed on
Honorine the pale gold, ambient glory in which Raphael and Titian, alone
of all painters, have been able to enwrap the Virgin. Her brown
eyes expressed both tenderness and vivacity; their brightness seemed
reflected in her face through the long downcast lashes. Merely by
lifting her delicate eyelids, Honorine could cast a spell; there was
so much feeling, dignity, terror, or contempt in her way of raising or
dropping those veils of the soul. She could freeze or give life by a
look. Her light-brown hair, carelessly knotted on her head, outlined
a poet's brow, high, powerful, and dreamy. The mouth was wholly
voluptuous. And to crown all by a grace, rare in France, though common
in Italy, all the lines and forms of the head had a stamp of nobleness
which would defy the outrages of time.

"Though slight, Honorine was not thin, and her figure struck me as
being one that might revive love when it believed itself exhausted. She
perfectly represented the idea conveyed by the word _mignonne_, for she
was one of those pliant little women who allow themselves to be taken
up, petted, set down, and taken up again like a kitten. Her small feet,
as I heard them on the gravel, made a light sound essentially their own,
that harmonized with the rustle of her dress, producing a feminine
music which stamped itself on the heart, and remained distinct from the
footfall of a thousand other women. Her gait bore all the quarterings of
her race with so much pride, that, in the street, the least respectful
working man would have made way for her. Gay and tender, haughty and
imposing, it was impossible to understand her, excepting as gifted with
these apparently incompatible qualities, which, nevertheless, had left