Phyllis Bottome

“ This one you have here, this Fanny, she is like the Venus of the Terme in Rome. You know her perhaps, headless, alas! but with an expression of the body as soft as a south wind. You remember her, Geoffrey?"
"Oh, yes, I remember her all right," said Geoffrey, crossly. "Let's leave the damned thing alone and come and have tea. I beg your pardon, Miss Loomis! It's not that I don't admire your work; it's—it's—"
"It's that you admire the work of nature more?" laughed Dupin. "Be careful, my good friend. Nature has already supplied you with what to admire." ”

“ Dupin murmured, "a thousand times I was right: we sculptors have an opportunity you painters miss—we have the roundness of life."
Geoffrey lifted his unwilling eyes and saw the statue, and beyond it, in the open doorway, stood Fanny.
She stood quite still, looking at Geoffrey. He never forgot her eyes. They did not judge him, but they were the eyes of some one who has been hurt by a friend. Geoffrey thought then, and he thought more strongly afterward, that he had never seen such unprotected eyes. ”

“ Ives, Marcel Dupin made a charming second impression. He took the story of Fanny from half a word, and prevented Emily from feeling any awkwardness in telling it.
"You have touched me profoundly," he assured her. "Englishwomen are a race apart; they trust the men they love and are kind to other women. It is an astonishing combination. I shall never forget it."
To Geoffrey he was a trifle less sympathetic. ”