When I looked at Judith, I was smitten with a great pain. She
had not looked so young, so fresh, so fragilely fair for many
months. She wore a dress of corn-flower blue that deepened the
violet of her eyes. In the mass of flax hued thistle-down that
is her hair a blue argus butterfly completed the chord of colour.
There was the faintest tinge of pink in her cheek applied with
delicate art. Her dress seemed made of unsubstantial dream
stuff--I believe they call it chiffon--and it covered her bosom
and arms like the spray of a fairy sea. She had the air of an
impalpable Undine, a creation of sea-foam and sea-flower; an
exquisite suggestion of the ethereal which floated beauty, as it
were, into her face. I know little of women, save what these
past few grievous months have taught me; but I know that hours of
anxious thought and desperate hope lay behind this effect of
fragile loveliness. The wit of woman could not have rendered a
woman's body a greater contrast to that of her rival; and with
infinite subtlety she had imbued the contrast with the deeper
significance of rare and spiritual things.
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