“Would you call her beautiful?  I ask myself again and again, trying to put myself behind your eyes.  She has nothing, at any rate, in common with the beauties we have down here, or with those my aunt bade me admire in London last May.  The face has a strong Italian look, but not Italian of to-day.  Do you remember the Ghirlandajo frescoes in Santa Maria Novella, or the side groups in Andrea’s frescoes at the Annunziata?  Among them, among the beautiful tall women of them, there are, I am sure, noble, freely-poised, suggestive heads like hers—­hair, black wavy hair, folded like hers in large simple lines, and faces with the same long, subtle curves.  It is a face of the Renaissance, extraordinarily beautiful, as it seems to me, in colour and expression; imperfect in line, as the beauty which marks the meeting point between antique perfection and modern character must always be.  It has morbidezza—­unquiet melancholy charm, then passionate gaiety—­everything that is most modern grafted on things Greek and old.  I am told that Burne Jones drew her several times while she was in London, with delight.  It is the most artistic beauty, having both the harmonies and the dissonances that a full-grown art loves.

“She may be twenty or rather more.  The mind has all sorts of ability; comes to the right conclusion by a divine instinct, ignoring the how and why.  What does such a being want with the drudgery of learning? to such keenness life will be master enough.  Yet she has evidently read a good deal—­much poetry, some scattered political economy, some modern socialistic books, Matthew Arnold, Ruskin, Carlyle.  She takes everything dramatically, imaginatively, goes straight from it to life, and back again.  Among the young people with whom she made acquaintance while she was boarding in London and working at South Kensington, there seem to have been two brothers, both artists, and both Socialists; ardent young fellows, giving all their spare time to good works, who must have influenced her a great deal.  She is full of angers and revolts, which you would delight in.  And first of all, she is applying herself to her father’s wretched village, which will keep her hands full.  A large and passionate humanity plays about her.  What she says often seems to me foolish—­in the ear; but the inner sense, the heart of it, command me.

“Stare as you please, Ned!  Only write to me, and come down here as soon as you can.  I can and will hide nothing from you, so you will believe me when I say that all is uncertain, that I know nothing, and, though I hope everything, may just as well fear everything too.  But somehow I am another man, and the world shines and glows for me by day and night.”

Aldous Raeburn rose from his chair and, going to the window, stood looking out at the splendour of the autumn moon.  Marcella moved across the whiteness of the grass; her voice was still speaking to his inward ear.  His lips smiled; his heart was in a wild whirl of happiness.