midnight
But the vision of Aimée -- that delicate beauty in its tragic irony of throne and diadem ! It touched him to tenderness and to an actual sense of sacrilege at the freedom of his gaze . No moonlight vision this , ethereal and dream-like , but a vivid , disquieting radiance of dark , shining eyes and rose-flushed cheeks . He had never seen her hair before , midnight hair , escaping little curls from the veil and the diadem . And he had never really seen her mouth -- wistful and gay , like the mouth of the miniature ... nor her chin , so tender and willful ... nor her skin , satin-soft , in its veiling from the daylight ... . She was more than young and sweet and fair . She was beauty , beauty with its elusive , ineluctable spell , entangled with the appeal of her helplessness .