He could compare her with Cecilia, who never would have risked a glove, never have betrayed a tear, and was the statelier lady, not without language:  but how much less vivid in feature and the gift of speech!  Renee’s gift of speech counted unnumbered strings which she played on with a grace that clothed the skill, and was her natural endowment—­an art perfected by the education of the world.  Who cannot talk!—­but who can?  Discover the writers in a day when all are writing!  It is as rare an art as poetry, and in the mouths of women as enrapturing, richer than their voices in music.

This was the fascination Beauchamp felt weaving round him.  Would you, that are separable from boys and mobs, and the object malignly called the Briton, prefer the celestial singing of a woman to her excellently talking?  But not if it were given you to run in unison with her genius of the tongue, following her verbal ingenuities and feminine silk-flashes of meaning; not if she led you to match her fine quick perceptions with more or less of the discreet concordance of the violoncello accompanying the viol.  It is not high flying, which usually ends in heavy falling.  You quit the level of earth no more than two birds that chase from bush to bush to bill in air, for mutual delight to make the concert heavenly.  Language flowed from Renee in affinity with the pleasure-giving laws that make the curves we recognize as beauty in sublimer arts.  Accept companionship for the dearest of the good things we pray to have, and what equalled her!  Who could be her rival!

Her girl’s crown of irradiated Alps began to tremble over her dimly, as from moment to moment their intimacy warmed, and Beauchamp saw the young face vanishing out of this flower of womanhood.  He did not see it appearing or present, but vanishing like the faint ray in the rosier.  Nay, the blot of her faithlessness underwent a transformation:  it affected him somewhat as the patch cunningly laid on near a liquid dimple in fair cheeks at once allures and evades a susceptible attention.

Unused in his French of late, he stumbled at times, and she supplied the needed phrase, taking no note of a blunder.  Now men of sweet blood cannot be secretly accusing or criticizing a gracious lady.  Domestic men are charged with thinking instantly of dark death when an ordinary illness befalls them; and it may be so or not:  but it is positive that the gallant man of the world, if he is in the sensitive condition, and not yet established as the lord of her, feels paralyzed in his masculine sense of leadership the moment his lady assumes the initiative and directs him:  he gives up at once; and thus have many nimble-witted dames from one clear start retained their advantage.

Concerning that glove:  well! the handsomest young man in France wore the glove of the loveliest woman.  The loveliest?  The very loveliest in the purity of her French style—­the woman to challenge England for a type of beauty to eclipse her.  It was possible to conceive her country wagering her against all women.