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.