To a young man with the
least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red
top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before
seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such
persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with
snow. Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But
no--they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the imperfect
upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was
that which gave the humanity.
Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many times that he
could reproduce them mentally with ease: and now, as they again
confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent an _aura_
over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves, which well nigh produced
a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological
process, a prosaic sneeze.
She then became conscious that he was observing her; but she would
not show it by any change of position, though the curious dream-like
fixity disappeared, and a close eye might easily have discerned that
the rosiness of her face deepened, and then faded till only a tinge
of it was left.
The influence that had passed into Clare like an excitation from the
sky did not die down.
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