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 her still a child. But it was
a child who might be as strong as an angel; and, like the angel, once
hurt in her nature, she would be implacable.

"Coldness on that face must no doubt be death to those on whom her
eyes had smiled, for whom her set lips had parted, for those whose
soul had drunk in the melody of that voice, lending to her words the
poetry of song by its peculiar intonation. Inhaling the perfume of