Page:A pair of blue eyes (1873 Volume 1).pdf/18

4 her features when conversing with her; and this charming power of preventing a material study of her externals by an interlocuter originated not in the invisible cloak of a well-formed manner (for her manner was childish and scarcely formed), but in the attractive crudeness of the remarks themselves. She had lived all her life in retirement—the monstrari digito of idle men had not flattered her, and at the age of nineteen or twenty she was no farther on in social consciousness than an urban young lady of fifteen.

One point in her, however, you did notice: that was her eyes. In them was seen a sublimation of all of her; it was not necessary to look farther: there she lived.

These eyes were blue; heavenly blue.

At least heavenly blue in High Parnassian. But at the risk of lapsing into too extreme a realism for narrative art, let it be said in reasonable prose that her eyes were, more truly, blue as autumn distance—blue