with a rare and radiant beauty. What is your opinion?"
"Very likely," I murmured. "But you must remember that I never saw you."
"What! Not seen me? What about that skeleton of mine? Ha! ha! ha! Never mind. I was only joking. How can I ever make you believe that those two cavernous hollows contained the brightest of dark, languishing eyes? And that the smile which was revealed by those ruby lips had no resemblance whatever to the grinning teeth which you used to see? The mere attempt to convey to you some idea of the grace, the charm, the soft, firm, dimpled curves, which in the fulness of youth were growing and blossoming over those dry old bones makes me smile; it also makes me angry. The most eminent doctors of my time could not have dreamed of the bones of that body of mine as materials for teaching osteology. Do you know, one young doctor that I knew of actually compared me to a golden champak blossom. It meant that to him the rest of humankind was fit only to illustrate the science of psysiology, that I was a flower of beauty. Does any one think of the skeleton of a champak flower?
