Of her beauty he grew every minute more aware. It was not of the
conspicuous and conquering kind; it carried no flaming banner of
triumphant sex; indeed, it demanded a kindred fineness of perception
to discern it, being yet vague with the softness of her youth. Her
hair was mere darkness without colour or flame, her face mere
whiteness without a flush; all her colour and her light were, where
her soul was, in her mouth and eyes. These showed more vivid for that
toneless setting; they dominated her face. However he looked at her
his gaze was led up to them. For the long dim lines of her body flowed
upwards from her feet like the curves of a slender flame, mingling,
aspiring, vanishing; the edges of her features were indistinct as the
edges of a flame. This effect of an upward sweep was repeated in the
tilt of her vivid mouth and emphasised by the arch of her eyebrows,
giving a faintly interrogative expression to her face. All this he
noticed. He noticed everything about her, from the fine curling
flame-like edges of her mouth and the flawless rim of her ears, to her
finger-tips and the slope of her small imperious feet. He caught every
inflection of her voice; without looking at her, he was aware of every
turn of her head, every movement of her eyelids; he watched with
furtive interest her way of touching and handling things, of rising
and sitting, of walking and being still. It was a new way, unlike
Poppy's way, or Flossie's way, or the way of any woman he had yet
seen. What struck him most was the intense quiet of her presence; it
was this that made his own so noisy and obtrusive.

And yet, she didn't, she really didn't appear to notice it. She might
have been unaware that there was any such person as Mr. Savage Keith
Rickman in the room. He wondered how on earth she achieved that serene
unconsciousness; he came to the conclusion that it was not her own
achievement at all, but the achievement of her race. Theirs too that