A Study of the Interplay of Personality

It was thus that Mrs. G. saw Albert when she stepped into our living room for the first time, early one June afternoon. Two steps led down from the wide doorway, through from the hall into the long room. Mrs. G. stood?I should say loomed? the open doorway at the top of the two steps. She was big,?a Woman of tremendous physique, a Viking woman. Indeed, at times, she called herself a Scandinavian, though most probably she was either a Russian or a Finn. A northern or eastern European she most certainly was?Teuton, Scandinavian, or Slav?and four years ?n this side of the Atlantic had left her still very foreign. She gave, standing there a little above him, an extraordinary lrnpression of poise, maturity, dominance. Yet she was still young? not more than thirty-five. In spite of her size there was grace in the Movement and shape of her hand and arm. Her skin was very white, not pale, but as the medieval romancers said, milk white; her lips, very red, and her eyes, clear blue. Her brown hair, coarse and stiff from the curling iron, was not pretty, yet somehow its very dulness blended into the general color of her. She was, moreover, Well-groomed, expensively groomed, with excessive care for detail, for finish. As she looked down on Albert, fidgeting in his tight, ill-cut clothes, it was her face that eluded one. It was a face set in hard hnes of sheer force, yet one caught in it, too, a strange, alien quality of feminine charm. It was the force, however, and not the charm that Albert saw that afternoon. The silly giggle died on his lips; he turned hastily, and went out by the screen door, slamming it behind him.