Nature had made the woman in a freak of rare sincerity.

There were no reflected lights about her; no gloss on her skin, no glitter in her eyes, no varnish on her soul.

Simple and dark and pure, there she was, for God and her master to conquer and understand.

Her flesh was cold and colourless,--there were no surface tints on it,--it warmed sometimes slowly from far within; her voice, quiet,--out of her heart; her hair, the only beauty of the woman, was lustreless brown, lay in unpolished folds of dark shadow.

I saw such hair once, only once.