But where is the use of talking about her? I don't
believe, you know, that even the greatest painter can show what is the real
beauty of a very beautiful woman in the ordinary sense: Titian's and
Tintoretto's women must have been miles handsomer than they have made them.
Something--and that the very essence--always escapes, perhaps because real
beauty is as much a thing in time--a thing like music, a succession, a
series--as in space. Mind you, I am speaking of a woman beautiful in the
conventional sense. Imagine, then, how much more so in the case of a woman
like Alice Oke; and if the pencil and brush, imitating each line and tint,
can't succeed, how is it possible to give even the vaguest notion with mere
wretched words--words possessing only a wretched abstract meaning, an
impotent conventional association? To make a long story short, Mrs. Oke of
Okehurst was, in my opinion, to the highest degree exquisite and
strange,--an exotic creature, whose charm you can no more describe than you
could bring home the perfume of some newly discovered tropical flower by
comparing it with the scent of a cabbage-rose or a lily.
That first dinner was gloomy enough.
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