At an hotel on the South Coast I met a Miss Browne, which is not her name, and I rather hope this sketch will not be read by anyone nearly related to her, as they might identify her from the description. A middle-aged lady with a brown skin, black hair and dark eyes, an oval face, fairly good-looking, her manner lively and attractive, her movements quick without being abrupt or jerky. She was highly intelligent and a good talker, with more to say than most women, and better able than most to express herself. We were at the same small table and got on well together, as I am a good listener and she knew--being a woman, how should she not?--that she interested me. One day at our table the conversation happened to be about the races of men and the persistence of racial characteristics, physical and mental, in persons of mixed descent. The subject interested her. "What would you call me?" she asked. "An Iberian," I returned. She laughed and said: "This makes the third time I have been called an Iberian, so perhaps it is true, and I'm curious to know what an Iberian is, and why I'm called an Iberian. Is it because I have something of a Spanish look?" I answered that the Iberians were the ancient Britons, a dark-eyed, brown-skinned people who inhabited this country and all Southern Europe before the invasion of the blue-eyed races; that doubtless there had been an Iberian mixture in her ancestors, perhaps many centuries ago, and that these peculiar characters had come out strongly in her; she had the peculiar kind of blood in her veins and the peculiar sort of soul which goes with the blood. "But what a mystery it is!" she exclaimed. "I am the only small one in a family of tall sisters. My parents were both tall and light, and the others took after them. I was small and dark, and they were tall blondes with blue eyes and pale gold hair. And in disposition I was unlike them as in physique. How do you account for it?" It was a long question, I said, and I had told her all I could about it. I couldn't go further into it; I was too ignorant. I had just touched on the subject in one of my books. It was in other books, with reference to a supposed antagonism which still survives in blue-eyed and dark-eyed people. She asked me to give her the titles of the books I spoke of. "You imagine, I daresay," she said, "that it is mere idle curiosity on my part. It isn't so. The subject has a deep and painful interest for me." That was all, and I had forgotten all about the conversation until some time afterwards, when I had a letter from her recalling it. I quote one passage without the alteration of a syllable: