Chapter 29 - Page 2

conciliated, never
supercilious, generous.

"What has come to Merton?" he said. "Confound the fellow! I used to think
him so quiet, but now he would talk a donkey's hind-leg off. He's going
to the dogs, I think, and I'm sorry I met him.... No, not sorry, since
through meeting him I have made the acquaintance of that exquisite
girl.... If I know what it is to be in love--and do I not?--I fancy I am
beginning to feel the symptoms of that sweet sickness. I could not think
of such a face and feel well. I must try to get her photo and have it
enlarged; Mills could do a beautiful water-colour portrait from it....
Figure slim, and a most perfect complexion, with a colour delicate as the
blush on the petals of some white flower. Nose straight enough and of the
right size. It is possible to love, as I happen to know, women with
insignificant noses, but impossible not to feel some contempt for them at
the same time. Mouth--well, of a girl or woman, not a suckling--not the
facial disfigurement called a rose-bud mouth, which has as little
attraction for me as the Connemara or even the Zulu mouth. But how
describe it, since the poets have not taught me? The painters manage
these things better; but even their prince, Rossetti, has nothing on his
canvases to compare with this delicate feature. Hair, golden-brown, very
bright; for it does not lie like grass, beaten flat and sodden with rain;
it is fluffy, loose, crisp, with little stray tresses on forehead, neck,
and temples. About her eyes, those windows of the soul, I can only say--
nothing. Something in their grey, mysterious depths haunts me like music.
I don't know what it is. I have loved many a girl, from the northern with
arsenic complexion, china-blue eyes, and canary-coloured hair, to the
divine image cut in ebony, as some one piously and prettily says, but I
doubt that I have felt quite in this way before. Yet she is not clever,
as she says, and is only a poor shop-girl, her surname Affleck--that
quaint, plebeian name with its curious associations! I must not forget to
ask Merton to tell me her history. I shall certainly see him to-morrow,
although perhaps for the last time. Fifty pounds should be enough to pay
for the information I require. And that reminds me to ask myself a
question--Is it my intention to follow up this adventure? She is a friend
of Mrs. Chance, and since I met her at my friend's house, would it be a
right thing to do? A nice question, but why bother my brains about it?
One can't trust to appearances; but if she is what she looks no harm will
come to her. If she is like other girls of her class, not too pure and
good for human nature's daily food, then the result might be--not at all
unpleasant.... Women, pretty girls even, are very cheap in