Page:Jane Mander--The Strange Attraction.pdf/16

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The Strange Attraction

der who the deuce she was. And there was something in the carriage of her head, and the fashioning of her limbs and the assurance of her manner that confirmed his first impression that she was that desirable thing, somebody, not only in her own right, but with the added prestige of ancestors.

She was supple and loose-limbed and tanned from a summer spent largely in the open air. Her vitality had run over from her limbs into her amber hair. It had a curious luminousness, which caused many of her acquaintances to wonder what she did to it. She coiled it about her head in two thick ropes which usually dragged a little down her forehead, and often made her look like the queen of vampires, the very last lady of life and imagination she would have bothered to imitate. Beneath that amber hair, and beneath heavy eyebrows of the same colour, her deep-set and amused blue eyes softened a face that was a little too contemptuous, made one forget the nose, a little too strong for beauty, and antidoted a mouth that was curiously voluptuous. For the rest she had a fine skin, splendid colour, dimples, a good chin, and her head well set on a proud neck.

Bob stood over six feet, a well-developed and athletic male. The lines of his face were straight and his features cut with strength, but with little suggestion of delicacy. His heavy black eyebrows met when he frowned over humorous brown eyes that found the world a pretty good place to live in. In fact most things were pretty good to him. He had a healthy crop of coarse black hair on his well-shaped head, and it was always cut the conventional length and combed in the conventional way. He was always carefully up-to-date with his clothes, and looked exceedingly well in them. At twenty-seven he had extricated himself from the perplexities of youth and adolescence, had