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PARTISAN REVIEW
were lit, but afterwards I was to see that it had a bloom of color upon
it. Her h::1.ir, which was in a remarkable abundance and of great fair–
ness was drawn back from her face and worn in large coils low down
to the neck. Her waist was very small and her breasts, which seemed
naturally high and round and full, were the higher for the corsetting.
Her dress, of a dark blue silk, I remember, was cut low to the very
downward curve of the shoulders, and in the front showed how the
breasts were lifted like twin orbs."
Cass described her that way. He admitted that her face was not
beautiful. "Though agreeable in its proportions," he added. But the
hair was beautiful, and "of an astonishing softness, upon your hand
softer and finer than your thought of silk." So even in that moment,
in the midst of the "darkness and trouble," the recollection intrudes
into the journal of how that abundant, fair hair had slipped across
}ill,
fingers. "But," he added, "her beauty was her eyes."
He had remarked how, when she first came in, into the shadowy
room, her eyes had seemed black. But he had been mistaken, he was
to discover, and that discovery was the first step toward
his
undoing.
After the greeting ("she greeted me with great simplicity and courtesy
and bade me again take my seat"), she remarked on how dark the
room was and how the autumn always came to take one unawares.
Then she touched a bell-pull and a negro boy entered. "She com–
manded him to bring light and to mend the fire, which was sunk to
ash, or near so. He came back presently with a seven-branched candle–
stick which he put upon the table back of the couch on which I sat.
He struck a lucifer but she said 'Let me light the candles.' I remem–
ber it as if yesterday. I was sitting on the couch. I had turned my
head idly to watch her light the candles. The little table was between
us. She leaned over the candles and applied the lucifer to the wicks,
one after another. She was leaning over, and I saw how the corset
lifted her breasts together, but because she was leaning the eyelids
shaded her eyes from my sight. Then she raised her head a little and
looked straight at me over the new candle flames, and I saw all at
once that her eyes were not black. They were blue, but a blue so deep
that I can only compare it to the color of the night sky in autumn
when the weather is clear and there is no moon and the stars have just
well come out. And I had not known how large they were. I remem–
ber saying that to myself with perfect clearness, 'I had not known
how large they were,' several times, slowly, like a man marvelling.
Then I knew that I was blushing and I felt my tongue dry like ashes
in my mouth and I was in the manly state.
