What was it that made me yearn to walk across? What was it that made me want to give myself to her? It wasn’t just that she was exquisite. Sure, you had the gently smiling mouth, the soft full lips, the set-square straightness of that lovely nose. I could take or leave all that. You could see similar blandly beautiful young people in any fashion magazine. But she was flawed, too. That was the brilliance of it. There was a homeliness to her, something ordinary in the lines of the face that made her seem accessible. It was the flash of Doris Blower behind Marianne de Sèvres.
