But perhaps her great beauty
was in the brilliant clearness of her dark complexion. You might
almost fancy that you could see into it so as to read the different
lines beneath the skin. She was somewhat tall, though by no means
tall to a fault, and was so thin as to be almost meagre in her
proportions. She always wore her dress close up to her neck, and
never showed the bareness of her arms. Though she was the only woman
so clad now present in the room, this singularity did not specially
strike one, because in other respects her apparel was so rich and
quaint as to make inattention to it impossible. The observer who did
not observe very closely would perceive that Madame Max Goesler's
dress was unlike the dress of other women, but seeing that it was
unlike in make, unlike in colour, and unlike in material, the
ordinary observer would not see also that it was unlike in form for
any other purpose than that of maintaining its general peculiarity
of character. In colour she was abundant, and yet the fabric of
her garment was always black. My pen may not dare to describe the
traceries of yellow and ruby silk which went in and out through
the black lace, across her bosom, and round her neck, and over her
shoulders, and along her arms, and down to the very ground at her
feet, robbing the black stuff of all its sombre solemnity, and
producing a brightness in which there was nothing gaudy.
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