This one, whom I have known better than any other woman in the world, is most difficult of all for me to picture.

She stood there, not uninterested altogether, for, no doubt, Harlson had been telling her already of his closest friend, his lieutenant in many things, and I had an opportunity to study her with all closeness as we exchanged the commonplaces.

I understood, when I saw her, how it was that he had referred to her so absurdly as a little brown streak of a thing.

Little she was, assuredly, and brown, and so slender, that his simile was not bad, but the brownness and the slenderness were by no means all there was noticeable of her.

She was not imposing, this woman, but she was not commonplace.