Helen Darley could not, in the nature of things, have possessed the kind
of beauty which pleases the common taste. Her eye was calm, sad-looking,
her features very still, except when her pleasant smile changed them for
a moment, all her outlines were delicate, her voice was very gentle, but
somewhat subdued by years of thoughtful labor, and on her smooth forehead
one little hinted line whispered already that Care was beginning to mark
the trace which Time sooner or later would make a furrow. She could not
be a beauty; if she had been, it would have been much harder for many
persons to be interested in her. For, although in the abstract we all
love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked souls into some
ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies and told to select one to our
liking, we should each choose a handsome one, and never think of the
consequences,--it is quite certain that beauty carries an atmosphere of
repulsion as well as of attraction with it, alike in both sexes. We may
be well assured that there are many persons who no more think of
specializing their love of the other sex upon one endowed with signal
beauty, than they think of wanting great diamonds or thousand-dollar
horses.
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