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The bones of her legs below the knees looked no thicker than a

finger from in front, but were extraordinarily thick seen from

the side. She looked altogether, except across the shoulders, as

it were, pinched in at the sides and pressed out in depth. But

she had in the highest degree the quality that makes all defects

forgotten: that quality was blood, the blood that tells, as the

English expression has it. The muscles stood up sharply under the

network of sinews, covered with the delicate, mobile skin, soft

as satin, and they were hard as bone. Her clean-cut head, with

prominent, bright, spirited eyes, broadened out at the open

nostrils, that showed the red blood in the cartilage within.

About all her figure, and especially her head, there was a

certain expression of energy, and, at the same time, of softness.

She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak

because the mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.