Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/143

 her yet; it had but thrown a gracious, pathetic delicacy about her as a veil. And even the charming coloring of her was not impaired.

There is no greater beauty of coloring than the coloring of such girls—not in England, not in Spain. Nang Ping's skin was no darker than the liquor of the finest Chinese tea, and not unlike it in hue, not green, not buff, but white, just hinting of each, and in her cheeks the delicate pink of a tea rose told how red the blood at her heart was, and how thin the patrician skin that masked and yet revealed it. The little figure, tall for a Chinese, was tenderly drawn and perfectly proportioned; the young presence, for all its gentleness, was queenly; the firmly modeled head was well set on the straight shoulders. Hair could not be blacker or arched jet brows more beautifully drawn. The girl's mobile mouth was large, but exquisitely shaped, and her red lips parted and closed over teeth that could not have been whiter, more faultless or more prettily set. There was a dimple in the obstinate chin, and one beneath the tiny mole on her right cheek; and her black, velvet eyes (soft now, and almost purple with unshed tears) were as straight set in the small head as the eyes of any Venus in Vatican or Louvre.

She stood a moment, gazing into space, clad only in her delicate smock, and then slowly she redressed herself in her simplest robes—soft, loose and gray. She had many such gowns, and wore them often. The Chinese are too greatly, too finely artist to let the gorgeousness in which they gloat degenerate by over-use into a commonplace. The blare of their brazen music has its long reliefs of slow, soft minor passages; their gayest gardens have prominent heaps of dull, barren stone, long stretches of cold, gray walls; each sumptuous room has its empty,