In this frame of mind René began to look at his fair neighbour, whose charms had made such an impression upon him during their momentary encounter in the hall. He had not been mistaken in judging her at the first glance as a creature of thoroughly aristocratic appearance. Everything about her, from her delicately-cut features to her slim waist and slender wrists, had an air of distinction and of almost excessive grace. Her hands seemed fragile, so dainty were her fingers and so transparent. The fault of such kind of beauty lies in the very qualities that constitute its charm. Its exceeding daintiness is frequently too pronounced, and what might really be graceful becomes peculiar. Closer study of Madame Moraines showed that this ethereal beauty encased a being of strength, and that beneath all this exquisite grace was hidden a woman who lived well, and whose sound health was revealed in many ways. Her shapely head was gracefully poised on a full neck, while her well-rounded shoulders were not disfigured by a single angle. When she smiled she showed a set of sharp white teeth, and the way in which she did honour to the supper testified that her digestion had withstood the innumerable dangers with which fashionable women are beset--from the pressure of corsets to late suppers, to say nothing of the daily habit of dining out. Her eyes, of a soft, pale blue, would remind a dreamer of Ophelia and Desdemona, but possessed that perfect, humid setting in which the physiognomists of yore saw signs of a full enjoyment of life, the freshness of her eyelids telling of happy slumbers that recruit the whole constitution, whilst her lovely complexion showed her rich blood to be free of any taint of anæmia. To a philosophising physician, the contrast between the almost ideal charm of this physiognomy and the evident materialism of this physiology would have furnished food for reflections not altogether reassuring. But the young man who was stealing glances at this beauty whilst toying with the morsel of _chaufroid_ set before him was a poet--that is to say, quite the opposite of a physician and a philosopher. Instead of analysing, he was beginning to take a delight in this proximity. He had that evening unwittingly succumbed to a spell of sensuality which was personified, so to speak, in this captivating woman, around whom there floated such a subtle and penetrating aroma. A faithful disciple of the masters of Parnassus, he had in his youth possessed a childish mania for perfumes, and he now inhaled with delight the rare and intoxicating odour he recognised as white heliotrope, remembering how he had once, when a prey to the nostalgia of refined passions, written a rhymed conceit in which the following lines occurred: Opoponax then sang, 'neath shades so sweet, The story of those lips that never meet.