women, scores of handsome women, a scant half dozen of really
beautiful women. But he knew at once, beyond all possibility of
question or doubt, that he had never seen or imagined anything so
exquisite as this girl of the orchard. Her loveliness was so
perfect that his breath almost went from him in his first delight
of it.

Her face was oval, marked in every cameo-like line and feature
with that expression of absolute, flawless purity, found in the
angels and Madonnas of old paintings, a purity that held in it no
faintest strain of earthliness. Her head was bare, and her
thick, jet-black hair was parted above her forehead and hung in
two heavy lustrous braids over her shoulders. Her eyes were of
such a blue as Eric had never seen in eyes before, the tint of
the sea in the still, calm light that follows after a fine
sunset; they were as luminous as the stars that came out over
Lindsay Harbour in the afterglow, and were fringed about with
very long, soot-black lashes, and arched over by most delicately
pencilled dark eyebrows. Her skin was as fine and purely tinted
as the heart of a white rose. The collarless dress of pale blue
print she wore revealed her smooth, slender throat; her sleeves
were rolled up above her elbows and the hand which guided the bow
of her violin was perhaps the most beautiful thing about her,
perfect in shape and texture, firm and white, with rosy-nailed
taper fingers. One long, drooping plume of lilac blossom lightly
touched her hair and cast a wavering shadow over the flower-like
face beneath it.

There was something very child-like about her, and yet at least
eighteen sweet years must have gone to the making of her. She