Women Who Seek

The girl with the dark hair and Chinese blue cloak was a very pretty girl, not more than twenty-one, with eyes as blue as her cloak, and a round baby face.

* * *

He was a moon-faced youth with horn-rimmed spectacles, limpid eyes with girlishly-long lashes and slim graceful body.

* * *

Lawrence Hammond was a member of Bobby’s club - thirty-one, travelled, amusing in a rather dry, cynical fashion. He had a thin dark face of satyr; a face browned by tropic suns and lined by experience. He was of medium height, and moved extraordinary well. He played excellent bridge, told witty stories with the air and wit of a born actor, and was altogether good company.

* * *

The other girl he hadn’t met until tonight. Her name was Eve Walton-Evans. Here was a girl - a mere child of nineteen. And she was charming to look at, with her well-shaped brown head, rather pale fine skin, and a small straight nose. Her hazel-green eyes were set wide apart; quite beautiful between thick brown lashes.

* * *

She was a thin, slight woman with slightly-stooping shoulders and hair which had once been blonde, but was now ashen-grey, looped back from her head and pinned up in an old-fashioned chignon. In her youth she had been pretty, but ill-health had robbed her of all good looks. Her extreme slenderness made her look young for fifty-five. Her thin bloodless lips, turned down at each corner, and her large pale-blue eyes expressed disappointment in life and the most unhappily jealous temperament.

* * *

Dr. Graham gave her an impression of being a very nice young man; That was boring, of course. He was a little too tall, ungainly in his movements; she had noticed the awkwardness with which he had lit his cigarette. But she had also noticed the hand that held the match - and hands were very important to Eve.

It was a nice hand - broad, with long thin fingers, rather big knuckles, and blunt tips, the nails oblong and closely pared. It looked a strong, capable hand. The hands were typical of the man; he looked altogether a strong, capable person. He had fair, very fair hair, which seemed to spring crisply upward from the roots; rather too much of a bunch of it in front. But he had very good features, a straight sensitive nose, a charming mouth, suggesting a sweet temper, and a pair of very blue eyes - mild, rather grave eyes. They were fringed with long fair lashes which gave him a delicate boyish look, and he had a long chin, which flawed a face which otherwise would have been very regular and handsome. The general effect, however, was a very agreeable one, and Eve mental put Dr. Graham down as a «good-looking man».

* * *

Anne Flaming was a small, neat little woman and she was as dark as Michael was fair. She had smooth, black hair - close-cropped, inclined to wave - very small, exquisite ears in which she wore small real pearls, a thin oval face, brown from the Indian sun, and quite the loveliest eyes Eve had ever seen. They were large dark-brown eyes full of tenderness and sympathy.

* * *

Eve liked the look of Anne’s husband. He was not strikingly handsome, but there was something very attractive about him. He had blue eyes that twinkled, a good-tempered mouth with a close-clipped brown moustashe, a very high intelligent forehead, and curly brown hair showing grey threads, and fast growing thin on the top. He looked the picture of health, a rather typical Army man, used to hard riding, a good deal of open-air exercise, cricket, polo, rugger.

* * *

She was as much intrigued by his appearance as by his volcanic personal. Very pale - his face was almost of an ivory whiteness. Later, when she knew him better, she found that he never had any colour even when he grew excited or hot. His hair was thick, straight, black, growing low on an intelligent forehead, brushed smoothly, and parted on one side. Rather a narrow jaw and chin, the faun-like lips that had first claimed her attention, and the most brilliant eyes she had ever looked into. Dark brown - almost black - sparkles under straight, narrow brows.

Ian Fleming.