Beauty comes to him and beguiles him, but it is a beauty akin to that of Michel Angelo's 'Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed'-- which yet, for all its purity, is not, as Fenwick's case shows, without its tragic effects in the world.
On looking through my notes, I find that this was not my first idea.
The distracting intervening woman was to have been of a commoner type, intellectual indeed rather than sensuous, but yet of the predatory type and class, which delights in the capture of man.

When I began to write the first scene in which Eugenie was to appear, she was still nebulous and uncertain.

Then she did appear--suddenly!--as though the mists parted.

It was not the woman I had been expecting and preparing for.

But I saw her quite distinctly; she imposed herself; and thenceforward I had nothing to do but to draw her.
The drawing of Eugenie made perhaps my chief pleasure in the story, combined with that of the two landscapes--the two sharply contrasted landscapes--Westmoreland and Versailles, which form its main background.