Evert Winthrop, beholding her for the first time in the little Episcopal church of Gracias, had said to himself that she was the most beautiful girl (viewing the matter impersonally) whom he had ever seen. Impersonally, because he would have set down his personal preference as decidedly for something less striking, for eyes of blue rather than black, eyes which should be not so much lustrous as gentle, for smooth hair of pale gold, a forehead and eyebrows like those of a Raphael Madonna. He was sure, also, that he much preferred slenderness; even a certain virginal thinness and awkwardness he could accept, it might be part of the charm. A friend of his, a lady older than himself, upon hearing him express these sentiments not long before, had remarked that they shed a good deal of light backward over his past. When he asked her what she meant, she added that a liking for little wild flowers in a man of the world of his age, and an indifference to tea-roses, did not so much indicate a natural simplicity of taste as something quite apart from that--too long an acquaintance, perhaps, with the heavily perfumed atmosphere of conservatories. "I don't know what you are trying to make me out," Winthrop had answered, laughing. "I make you out a very good fellow," replied the lady. "But you are like my husband (who is also a very good fellow); he wonders how I can go to the theatre, plays are so artificial. I suppose they are artificial; but I notice that it required his closest--I may almost say his nightly--attention for something like fifteen years to find it out."