Gustav Klimt Mother and Child detail from The Three Ages of Woman painting

Gustav Klimt Mother and Child detail from The Three Ages of Woman paintingGuido Reni The Archangel Michael paintingFrancois Boucher The Rape of Europa painting
was not everybody’s nose; many prefer one with greater body; it was not a nose to appeal to painters, for it was far too small and quite without shape, a mere dab of putty without apparent bone structure; a nose which made it impossible for its wearer to be haughty or imposing or astute. It would not have done for a governess or a cellist or even for a post office clerk, but it suited Miss Blade’s book perfectly, for it was a nose that pierced the thin surface crust of the English heart to its warm and pulpy core; a nose to take the thoughts of English manhood back to its schooldays, to the doughy-faced urchins on whom it had squandered its first affection, to memories of changing room and chapel and battered straw boaters. Three Englishmen in five, it is true, grow snobbish about these things in later and prefer a nose that makes more show in public—but two in five is an average with which any girl of modest fortune may be reasonably content.
Hector kissed her reverently on the tip of this nose. As he did so, his senses