As I turned away after a long look seaward, I met the Countess Semaroff and her daughter face to face. I bowed. Madame smiled and gave me her hand, and before withdrawing it she looked at her daughter and said-- 'My very dear, this is Monsieur Campbell. Ah, Monsieur, it has been a dream of my daughter to meet you.' 'I trust Mademoiselle will not find in me an illustration of the proverb, "Songe mensonge,"' I said, clumsily enough. Mademoiselle smiled slightly, as courtesy required, but all the while her eyes rested upon me searchingly and doubtfully, as though to satisfy herself whether I were to be believed in or distrusted, whether she might expect to find in the artist the complement and justification of his works. No kind of look, perhaps, is so difficult to sustain with composure as this. The most redoubtable artist is conscious that the inspiration of his best efforts comes from a source superior to himself, in comparison with which the average level of his thoughts and motives makes but a sorry show. The merciless and undisguised inquisition of an ardent and unsophisticated young woman is thus apt to become not a little trying, especially when the inquisitrix is furnished with such a pair of eyes as nature had endowed the Countess Almara withal. Indeed, strange and striking in other respects as was the beauty of the young Countess, it was her eyes that individualised her and rendered her a paragon among women. Large and perfectly black they were--so black that it was a wonder to see them so full of light. The iris was of breadth so unusual that, like a black sun between two clouds, its upper and lower rims were infringed upon by the imperial eyelids. The human eye, as every portrait painter knows, has in itself but a narrow range of expression: it is the setting that imports. Now, the Countess Almara's upper eyelid was falconlike--straight above the pupil, and falling away thence towards the cheek in a long sweeping curve--a bold, lavish eyelid, indicative of keen intelligence and a noble temper. In singular contrast with this was the lower lid, most sensitively and changefully fashioned, responsive to every shifting emotion, sad, mirthful, wistful, pleasurable, tender; this it was that betrayed the woman, as the other announced the countess. Like the shimmer of light upon water, the delicate nerves in this region were never at rest; here, as upon a photographic plate, was legible the impress of each word or unuttered thought. Thus it might be affirmed of the Countess Almara that she had two eyes where other women have but one; and certainly she was able to do four times more execution with her pair than most daughters of Eve can accomplish.