She used to come there to eat a
bun in quiet. She was a very gracefully-moving figure of a girl then,
very plainly dressed, with dark brown hair I remember, in a knot low
on her neck behind that confessed the pretty roundness of her head
and harmonised with the admirable lines of ears and cheek, the grave
serenity of mouth and brow.
She stood out among the other girls very distinctly because they dressed
more than she did, struck emphatic notes of colour, startled one by
novelties in hats and bows and things. I've always hated the rustle, the
disconcerting colour boundaries, the smart unnatural angles of women's
clothes. Her plain black dress gave her a starkness....
I do remember, though, how one afternoon I discovered the peculiar
appeal of her form for me. I had been restless with my work and had
finally slipped out of the Laboratory and come over to the Art Museum
to lounge among the pictures. I came upon her in an odd corner of the
Sheepshanks gallery, intently copying something from a picture that hung
high. I had just been in the gallery of casts from the antique, my mind
was all alive with my newly awakened sense of line, and there she stood
with face upturned, her body drooping forward from the hips just a
little--memorably graceful--feminine.
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