a bloom of coloring as eye could crave, in one immovable posture,—­as he had seen her once in some masquerade or tableau vivant.  June, I think it was, she chose to represent that evening,—­and with her usual success; for no woman ever knew more thoroughly her material of shape or color, or how to work it up.  Not an ill-chosen fancy, either, that of the moist, warm month.  Some tranced summer’s day might have drowsed down into such a human form by a dank pool, or on the thick grass-crusted meadows.  There was the full contour of the limbs hid under warm green folds, the white flesh that glowed when you touched it as if some smothered heat lay beneath, the sleeping face, the amber hair uncoiled in a languid quiet, while yellow jasmines deepened its hue into molten sunshine, and a great tiger-lily laid its sultry head on her breast.  June?  Could June become incarnate with higher poetic meaning than that which this woman gave it?  Mr. Kitts, the artist I told you of, thought not, and fell in love with June and her on the spot, which passion became quite unbearable after she had graciously permitted him to sketch her,—­for the benefit of Art.  Three medical students and one attorney Miss Herne numbered as having been driven into a state of dogged despair on that triumphal occasion.  Mr. Holmes may have quarrelled with the rendering, doubting to himself if her lip were not too thick, her eye too brassy and pale a blue for the queen of months; though I do not believe he thought at all about it.  Yet the picture clung to his memory.

As he slowly paced the room to-day, thinking of this woman as his wife, light blue eyes and yellow hair and the unclean sweetness of jasmine-flowers mixed with the hot sunshine and smells of the mill.  He could think of her in no other light.  He might have done so; for the poor girl had her other sides for view.  She had one of those sharp, tawdry intellects whose possessors are always reckoned “brilliant women, fine talkers.”  She was (aside from the necessary sarcasm to keep up this reputation) a good-humored soul enough,—­when no one stood in her way.  But if her shallow virtues or vices were palpable at all to him to-day, they became one with the torpid beauty of the oppressive summer day, and weighed on him alike with a vague disgust.  The woman luxuriated in perfume; some heavy odor always hung about her.  Holmes, thinking of her now, fancied he felt it stifling the air, and opened the window for breath.  Patchouli or copperas,—­what was the difference?  The mill and his future wife came to him together; it was scarcely his fault, if he thought of them as one, or muttered, “Damnable clog!” as he sat down to write, his cold eye growing colder.  But he did not argue the question any longer; decision had come keenly in one moment, fixed, unalterable.