Edith Wharton is one of my favorite authors. This is from The House of Mirth - a description of Lily Bart.
Scarcely three months had elapsed since he had parted from her on the threshold of the Bry's conservatory, but a subtle change had passed over the quality of her beauty. Then it had had a transparency through which the fluctuations of the spirit were sometimes magically visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a process of crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard brilliant substance. The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as a rejuvenation: in Selden it seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape.
It's All Temporary
