3707. How is one to describe a face, just what was it that Natalie
saw when she saw Alexis in the distance. When writers describe a face, do we
ever see the face they intended for us to see? A writer says that so-and-so has
a nose like a hatchet, but if so, what kind of a hatchet?
3708. Don’t we simply imagine some person we remember having
seen, who has a long narrow rather hooked nose, and press that person’s visage
into duty as the face in question?
3709. Tolstoy says that someone had a “Downy upper lip,” and he
never gives any further description. Perhaps it would have been just as well if
he said she did not have a downy upper lip, but he meant for us to picture a
beautiful woman, of that there can be no doubt.
3710. With that in mind, we will let stand Natalie’s
description of Alexis as being curly headed, and for those who are not
satisfied with that description, just picture to yourself all the thousands of
sculptures of young men and boys the ancient Greeks carved, with eyes that saw
clearly things we could only hope to ever glimpse.
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