The door opened gently, and a young girl, poorly but very neatly
dressed, entered the room. She was rather thin and under the average
height; but her head and figure were in perfect proportion. Her hair was
of that gorgeous auburn color, her eyes of that deep violet-blue, which
the portraits of Giorgione and Titian have made famous as the type of
Venetian beauty. Her features possessed the definiteness and regularity,
the "good modeling" (to use an artist's term), which is the rarest of
all womanly charms, in Italy as elsewhere. The one serious defect of
her face was its paleness. Her cheeks, wanting nothing in form, wanted
everything in color. That look of health, which is the essential
crowning-point of beauty, was the one attraction which her face did not
possess.