d be, he could only see her, with his artist's sense,
as delicate a bloom of coloring as eye could crave, in one immovable
posture,--as he had seen her once in some masquerade or _tableau
vivant_. June, I think it was, she chose to represent that evening,--and
with her usual success; for no woman ever knew more thoroughly her
material of shape or color, or how to work it up. Not an ill-chosen
fancy, either, that of the moist, warm month. Some tranced summer's day
might have drowsed down into such a human form by a dank pool, or on the
thick grass-crusted meadows. There was the full contour of the limbs hid
under warm green folds, the white flesh that glowed when you touched it
as if some smothered heat lay beneath, the sleeping face, the amber hair
uncoiled in a languid quiet, while yellow jasmines deepened its hue into
molten sunshine, and a great tiger-lily laid its sultry head on her
breast. June? Could June become incarnate with higher poetic meaning
than that which this woman gave it? Mr. Kitts, the artist I told you
of, thought not, and fell in love with June and her on the spot, which
passion became quite unbearable after she had graciously permitted him
to sketch her,--for the benefit of Art. Three medical students and one
attorney Miss Herne numbered as having been driven into a state
of dogged despair on that triumphal occasion. Mr. Holmes may have
quarrelled with the rendering, doubting to himself if her lip were not
too thick, her eye too brassy and pale a blue for the queen of months;
though I do not believe he thought at all about it. Yet the picture
clung to his memory.

As he slowly paced the room to-day, thinking of this woman as his
wife, light blue eyes and yellow hair and the unclean sweetness of
jasmine-flowers mixed with the hot sunshine and smells of the mill. He
could think of her in no other light. He might have done so; for the
poor girl had her other sides for view. She had one of those sharp,
tawdry intellects whose possessors are always reckoned "brilliant women,
fine talkers." She was (aside from the necessary sarcasm to keep up this
reputation) a good-humored soul enough,--when no one stood in her way.
But if her shallow virtues or vices were palpable at all to him to-day,
they became one with the torpid beauty of the oppressive summer day,
and weighed on him alike with a vague disgust. The woman luxuriated in
perfume; some heavy odor always hung about her. Holmes, thinking of her
now, fan