ONE:
ONE:Harry was openly vexed. "Well, either way! would any true man leave that woman behind?" and I tried to put in that that was what I had been leading up to; but it makes me smile yet, to recall how jauntily she discomfited us both. She triumphed with the airy ease of a king-bird routing a crow in the upper blue. Camille had more than once told me that Ccile was wise beyond the hope of her two cousins to emulate her; which had only increased my admiration for Camille; yet now I began to see how the sisters came by their belief. In the present discussion she was easily first among the four of us. At the same time her sensuous graces also took unquestionable pre?minence; city-bred though she was, she had the guise of belonging to the landscape, or, rather, of the landscape's belonging, by some fairy prerogative, to her. She seemed just let loose into the world, yet as ready and swift to make right use of it as any humming-bird let into a garden; as untimorous as any such, and as elusive. In this sultry June air she had all the animation both of mind and of frame that might have been expected of her on a keen, clear winter day. Her face never bore the same expression at the beginning and middle, or at either of these and the close, of any of her speeches, yet every change was lovely, the sign of a happy play of feeling, and proof of a mercurial intelligence. No report of them by this untrained pen would fully bear me out, and the best tribute I can offer is to avoid the task.III SHE
ONE:"There are women here who are not pretty, just as there are some in America; but when you are among them, it isn't polite to tell them of it. Some of them paint their faces to make them look pretty. I suppose nobody ever does anything of the kind in America or any other country but Japan, and therefore it is very wicked for the Japanese ladies to do so. And when they do paint, they lay it on very thick. Mr. Bronson calls it kalsomining, and Fred says it reminds him of the veneering that is sometimes put on furniture to make pine appear like mahogany, and have an expensive look, when it isn't expensive at all. The 'geishas,' or dancing and singing girls, get themselves up in this way; and when they have their faces properly arranged, they must not laugh, for fear that the effort of smiling would break the coating of paint. And I have heard it said that the covering of paint is so thick that they couldn't smile any more than a mask could; and, in fact, the paint really takes the place of a mask, and makes it impossible to recognize anybody through it.
