V.
Thought I was in love. Heavens! what a creature she was! Her form was like a fairy’s; and her face, about which the flaxen ringlets fell long, and soft, and silky, was at once so arch and sweet, it witched the very soul out of me before I knew it. Her picture is before me.—Her head like Juno’s, when she walked before the Olympic Thunderer, and yet a woman’s; her brow, high, and white, and pure; eyes of heaven’s own coloring, and bright, and ustrous, and large, and full, in whose crystalline depths slept a soul such as—as—you must guess at, reader, I can’t think of a comparison; a cheek, the eloquent beauty of which melted away so gradually into the pure transparency of her temples, that the eye lost it, and was wandering away, up, and around them, before it became aware of its own vagaries; and her mouth—Heavens and Earth! it was altogether and absolutely, the sweetest, prettiest, pouting, come-kiss-me, little mouth, I ever looked at; and her voice—her voice—how clear and musical—there was nothing like her clear, happy laugh—it rung like an instrument—like the silvery bell in the Faery Tale; and when she prettily bade me sit at her feet, and look up into her clear bright eyes—pooh! I might as well have attempted to knock Destiny on the head at once, and steer the boat of life myself, as keep from doing her bidding; and her form, robed as she was in her white cymar, with a single rose in her hair—the neck—the full bust—the rounded arm—the graceful curvature and wavy sweep of her folded dress, as it swelled from her glittering zone and fell to her feet—dear me! dear me—I—but this will do for a description.
Her name was Fan.
One beautiful twilight—I shan’t forget it soon—one twilight, as the sun went, and right over his glorious resting place, the clouds of evening, like an enormous sweep of woven chrysolite, hung pinned by a single star to the blue wall of heaven—I sat and gazed at that star, then into her eyes; now into her eyes, and then at that star again; and—I grew silly.
Says I, “Fan!”
Says she, “Frank!”
“You are very pretty,” says Frank.
“You are very impudent,” says Fan.
She shook her head at me, and drew her mouth into the queerest pucker imaginable.
“Fanny,” said I seriously.