Page:A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales (1875).djvu/222

216 play roulette, and yet make them harmonious and beautiful I have never been in the habit of thinking positive beauty the most excellent thing in a woman. I have always said to myself that if my heart was ever to be captured it would be by a sort of general grace,—a sweetness of motion and tone,—on which one could count for soothing impressions, as one counts on a musical instrument that is perfectly in tune. Madame Blumenthal has it,—this grace that soothes and satisfies; and it seems the more perfect that it keeps order and harmony in a character really passionately ardent and active. With her multifarious impulses and accomplishments nothing would be easier than that she should seem restless and over-eager and importunate. You will know her, and I leave you to judge whether she does. She has every gift, and culture has done everything for each. What goes on in her mind, I of course can't say; what reaches the observer—the admirer—is simply a penetrating perfume of intelligence, mingled with a penetrating perfume of sympathy."

"Madame Blumenthal," I said, smiling, "might be the loveliest woman in the world, and you the object of her choicest favors, and yet what I should most envy you would be, not your peerless friend, but your beautiful imagination."

"That's a polite way of calling me a fool," said