thought, in one of the bays of the Education Library. But really, as I
found out afterwards, she never read. She used to come there to eat a
bun in quiet. She was a very gracefully-moving figure of a girl then,
very plainly dressed, with dark brown hair I remember, in a knot low
on her neck behind that confessed the pretty roundness of her head
and harmonised with the admirable lines of ears and cheek, the grave
serenity of mouth and brow.

She stood out among the other girls very distinctly because they dressed
more than she did, struck emphatic notes of colour, startled one by
novelties in hats and bows and things. I've always hated the rustle, the
disconcerting colour boundaries, the smart unnatural angles of women's
clothes. Her plain black dress gave her a starkness....

I do remember, though, how one afternoon I discovered the peculiar
appeal of her form for me. I had been restless with my work and had
finally slipped out of the Laboratory and come over to the Art Museum
to lounge among the pictures. I came upon her in an odd corner of the
Sheepshanks gallery, intently copying something from a picture that hung
high. I had just been in the gallery of casts from the antique, my mind
was all alive with my newly awakened sense of line, and there she stood
with face upturned, her body drooping forward from the hips just a
little--memorably graceful--feminine.

After that I know I sought to see her, felt a distinctive emotion at
her presence, began to imagine things about her. I no longer thought
of generalised womanhood or of this casual person or that. I thought of
her.

An accident brought us together. I found myself one Monday morning in an