picture, and cried aloud: "Oh, beautiful, beautiful!"

I do not know how much of her I have been able to give. I have told
of our first talk--but words are so cold and dead! I stop and ask:
What there is, in all nature, that has given me the same feeling? I
remember how I watched the dragon-fly emerging from its chrysalis.
It is soft and green and tender; it clings to a branch and dries its
wings in the sun, and when the miracle is completed, there for a
brief space it poises, shimmering with a thousand hues, quivering
with its new-born ecstasy. And just so was Sylvia; a creature from
some other world than ours, as yet unsoiled by the dust and heat of
reality. It came to me with a positive shock, as a terrifying thing,
that there should be in this world of strife and wickedness any
young thing that took life with such intensity, that was so
palpitating with eagerness, with hope, with sympathy. Such was the
impression that one got of her, even when her words most denied it.
She might be saying world-weary and cynical things, out of the
maxims of Lady Dee; but there was still the eagerness, the sympathy,
surging beneath and lifting her words.

The crown of her loveliness was her unconsciousness of self. Even
though she might be talking of herself, frankly admitting her
beauty, she was really thinking of other people, how she could get
to them to help them. This I must emphasize, because, apart from
jesting, I would not have it thought that I had fallen under the
spell of a beautiful countenance, combined with a motor-car and a
patrician name. There were things about Sylvia that were
aristocratic, that could be nothing else; but she could be her same
lovely self in a cottage--as I shall prove to you before I finish
with the story of her life.