Gilbert's eyes fixed themselves, and for a moment he was in a sort of
waking trance, during which he could not for his life have described
one feature of the Queen's face; but when she spoke to him, his heart
leapt and his eyelids quivered, and her image was fixed upon his memory
forever. Young though he was, it would have been contrary to his grave
and rather melancholy disposition to lose his heart at first sight to
any woman, and it was neither love, nor love's forerunner, that
overcame him as he gazed at the Queen. It was a purely visual
impression, like that of being dazzled by a bright light, or made giddy
by sudden motion.

She was as tall as the King, but whereas he was heavily and awkwardly
built, her faultless proportion made an ungraceful movement an
impossibility, and the rhythmic ease of her slightest gesture expressed
an unfaltering bodily energy which no sudden fatigue nor stress of long
weariness could bring down. When she moved, Gilbert wished that he
might never see her in repose, yet as soon as the motion ceased, it
seemed a crime upon beauty to disturb her rest.

Her face and her throat, uncovered to the strong morning light, were of
a texture as richly clear as the tinted leaves of young orange-blossoms
in May; and like the flowers themselves, it seemed to rejoice in air
and sun, in dew and rain, perfected, not marred, by the touch of heat
and cold. The straight white throat rose like a column from the neck to
the delicate lobe of the faultless ear, and a generously modelled line
sprang in a clean curve of beauty to the sudden rounding of the ivory
chin, cleft in the midst by nature's supreme touch. Low on her forehead
the heavy waves of her hair were drawn back to each side under the
apple-green silk coverchief that was kept in place by the crown of
state. But she wore no wimple, and the broad waves flowed down upon her