And it was difficult to fly from her
pretty, inveigling face, delightful and winsome as the faces one finds
on the panels of the early German masters. One may look for her face
and find it on an oak panel in the Frankfort Gallery, painted in pale
tints, the cheeks faintly touched with carmine. In the background of
these pictures there are all sorts of curious things; very often a
gold bower with roses clambering up everywhere. Who was that master
who painted cunning virgins in rose bowers? The master of Cologne, was
it not? I have forgotten. No matter. Doris's hair was darker than the
hair of those virgins, a rich gold hair, a mane of hair growing as
luxuriously as the meadows in June. And the golden note was continued
everywhere, in the eyebrows, in the pupils of the eyes, in the
freckles along her little nose so firmly and beautifully modelled
about the nostrils; never was there a more lovely or affectionate
mouth, weak and beautiful as a flower; and the long hands were curved
like lilies.
There is her portrait, dear reader, prettily and truthfully and
faithfully painted by me, the portrait of a girl I left one afternoon
in London more than seventeen years ago, and whom I had lost sight of,
I feared for ever.
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