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That sketch up there with the boy's cap? Yes; that's the same woman. I
wonder whether you could guess who she was. A singular being, is she not?
The most marvellous creature, quite, that I have ever met: a wonderful
elegance, exotic, far-fetched, poignant; an artificial perverse sort of
grace and research in every outline and movement and arrangement of head
and neck, and hands and fingers. Here are a lot of pencil sketches I made
while I was preparing to paint her portrait. Yes; there's nothing but her
in the whole sketchbook. Mere scratches, but they may give some idea of her
marvellous, fantastic kind of grace. Here she is leaning over the
staircase, and here sitting in the swing. Here she is walking quickly out
of the room. That's her head. You see she isn't really handsome; her
forehead is too big, and her nose too short. This gives no idea of her. It
was altogether a question of movement. Look at the strange cheeks, hollow
and rather flat; well, when she smiled she had the most marvellous dimples
here. There was something exquisite and uncanny about it. Yes; I began the
picture, but it was never finished.
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