And Pavitt let her in. (It was the first time he had failed in this way.) He never explained or apologized for it afterwards.  He seemed to think that when I had seen Miss Thesiger I would see, even more vividly than he did, how impossible it was to do otherwise, unless he had relinquished all claim to manhood and to chivalry.  The look he sent me from the threshold as he retreated backwards, drawing the door upon himself like a screen and shutting me in alone with her, said very plainly, “You may curse, sir, and you may swear; but if you think you’ll get out of it any better than I have you’re mistaken.”

Yes:  it was something more than her appearance and her manner, though they, in all conscience, were enough.

I do not know what appearance and what manner, if any, are proper to a young woman calling on a young man at his rooms to seek employment.  The mere situation may, for all I know, bristle with embarrassments.  Anyhow, I can imagine that in some hands it might have moments, let us say, of extreme difficulty on either side.  Miss Thesiger’s appearance and her manner were perfect; but they didn’t suggest by any sign or shade that she was a young woman seeking employment, that she was a young woman seeking anything; but rather that she was a young woman to whom all things naturally came.

She approached me very slowly.  Her adorable little salutation, with all its maturity, its gravity, was somehow essentially young.  She was rather tall, and her figure had the same serious maturity in youth.  She carried her small head high, and held her shoulders well back, so that she got a sort of squareness into the divine slope of them (people hadn’t begun to slouch forward from the hips in those days), a squareness that agreed somehow with the character of her small face.  I didn’t know then whether it was a pretty face or not.  I daresay it was a bit too odd and square for prettiness, and, as for beauty, that had all gone into the lines of her body (which was beautiful, if you like).  When you looked carefully, you got a little square, white forehead, and straight eyebrows of the same darkness as her hair, and very distinct on the white, and eyes also very dark and distinct, and fairly crystalline with youth; and a little white and very young nose that started straight and ended absurdly in a little soft knob that had a sort of kink in it; and a mouth which would have been too large for her face if it hadn’t made room for itself by tilting up at the corners; and then a little square white chin and jaw; they were thrust forward, but so lightly and slenderly that it didn’t matter.  It doesn’t sound—­does it?—­as if she could have been pretty, let alone beautiful; and yet—­and yet she managed that little head of hers and that little odd face so as to give an impression of beauty or of prettiness.  It was partly the oddness of the face and head, coming on the top of all that symmetry, that perfection, that made the total effect of her so bewildering.  I can’t find words for the total effect (I don’t know that you ever got it all at once, and I certainly didn’t get it then), and if I were to tell you that what struck me first about her was something perverse and wilful and defiant, this would be misleading.