Tall as the Venus of Milo, she incarnates that noble figure with a lightness and a purity virginal and modern.
She is neither blonde nor brunette; of a type essentially American, she has glorious eyes and for her smile a man would lose his head.
It is a fact for students of heredity and environment to consider that Miss Winship is not a product of the cities. Jasper M. Winship, her father, is a bonanza farmer. Mrs. Winship was in her youth the belle of prairie dances, and still has remarkable beauty.
Born of pioneer stock, baby Helen was reared to a life of freedom; learning what she knew of grandeur from the sky and of luxury from the lap of Mother Earth. Child of the sunshine and sweet air, she danced with the butterflies, as innocent as they of cramping clothing that would distort her body, or of city conventionalities that might warp her mind.
Year by year she grew, a brown-faced cherub, strong-limbed and supple. Springtime after springtime her marvellous beauty budded, unnoted save by the passing traveller, who put aside the bright, wind-blown hair to gaze long into her fathomless eyes.
Roystering farm-hands checked their drunken songs at the little maid's approach, but no wild thing feared her. Birds and squirrels came at her call and fed from her hand.
And so it went. Chapters II and III described with brilliant inaccuracy my University life and made me a piquant mixture of devotee of science and favourite of fashion. Ah, well, it was all as accurate as Pa's name or Mother's beauty or her love of dancing—she thinks it's as wicked as playing cards.
Before I had read half the papers, between dread of Father and John and the absurdity of it all, I was in a gale of tears and laughter. More than once Milly crept to the door, or I heard in the hall the uneven step of lame little Ethel. But I wouldn't open. I was swept by a passion of——
Not grief, not anger, not concern, not fear of anything on earth; but—Joy!
Joy in my beauty, about which a million men and women had that morning read for the first time! Joy in the fame of my beauty which should last forever! Joy in my full and rapturous life!