"There is no to-morrow!"
I looked down on her as I stood, and a certain madness of youth seized
hold upon me. I knew that when she rose she would be just tall enough;
that she would be round, full, perfect woman in every line of her
figure; that her hair would be some sort of dark brown in the daylight;
that her eyes would also be of some sort of darkness, I knew not what,
for I could not see them fully through the domino. I could see the hair
piled back from the nape of as lovely a neck as ever caught a kiss. I
could see at the edge of the mask that her ear was small and close to
the head; could see that her nose must be straight, and that it sprang
from the brow strongly, with no weak indentation. The sweep of a strong,
clean chin was not to be disguised, and at the edge of the mask I caught
now and then the gleam of white, even teeth, and the mocking smile of
red, strongly curved lips, hid by her fan at the very moment when I was
about to fix them in my memory, so that I might see them again and know.
I suspect she hid a smile, but her eyes looked up at me grandly and
darkly. Nineteen, perhaps twenty, I considered her age to be; gentle,
and yet strong, with character and yet with tenderness, I made estimate
that she must be; and that she had more brains than to be merely a lay
figure I held sure, because there was something, that indefinable
magnetism, what you like to call it, which is not to be denied, which
assured me that here indeed was a woman not lightly to accept, nor
lightly to be forgotten.
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