seed-teeth

Updated: July 13, 2025

For only the artist in him had been at work. What stirred him was not the personality of the Countess not her charm nor beauty but the harmony of the colors playing about her figure: the reflected lights in the blue-black of her hair; the soft tones of the velvet lost in the shadows of the floor, and melting into the walls behind her; the high lights on the bare shoulder and arms divided by the severe band of black; the subdued grays in the fall of lace uniting the flesh tones and the bodice; and, more than all, the ringing note of red sung by the japonica tucked in her hair and which found its only echo in the red of her lips red as a slashed pomegranate with the white seed-teeth showing through.

Francis Hopkinson Smith - The Fortunes of Oliver Horn