It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of waterglasses when played on by a cunning hand. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed, such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain, but it is the truth. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it. Oh! Love is frantic agony, and life one throb of pain Yet I would bear its darkest woes to dream again. The vision and the glory, they are passing-they are gone. The dream that drank the meteor's light-the form from Heav'n has flown. The waves are raging round me- I'm reckless where they guide No hope is left to lighten me, no strength to stem the tide.Īs a leaf along the torrent, a cloud across the sky, As dust upon the whirlwind, so my life is drifting by. I saw you not, I heard not, for a mist was on my brain-I only felt that life could give no joy like that again.Īnd this was love-I knew it not, but blindly floated on, And now I'm on the ocean waste, dark, desolate, alone The air around grew languid with our intermingled breath, And in your beauty's shadow I sank motionless as death. What tremulous, faint ecstasy to clasp your hand in mine, Till the darkness fell upon me of a glory too divine! How softly, soul-subduing, fell your words upon mine ear, Like low aerial music when some angel hovers near! How beautiful, how beautiful you streamed upon my sight, In glory and in grandeur, as a gorgeous sunset-light! By the end of the week we have talked to a hundred bores whereas, if we had stuck to one of them, we might have found ourselves talking to a new friend, or a humorist, or a murderer, or a man who had seen a ghost. What dullness there is in our life arises mostly from its rapidity people pass us too quickly to show us their interesting side. All true romance is an attempt to simplify it, to cut it down to plainer and more pictorial proportions. Life is too large for us as it is: we have all too many things to attend to. That is what makes one impatient with that type of pessimistic rebel who is always complaining of the narrowness of his life and demanding a larger sphere. Instead of the humming swarm of human beings, relatives, customers, servants, postmen, afternoon callers, tradesmen, strangers who tell us the time, strangers who remark on the weather, beggars, waiters, and telegraph-boys-instead of this bewildering human swarm which passes us every day, fiction asks us to follow one figure (say the postman) consistently through his ecstasies and agonies. We read a good novel not in order to know more people, but in order to know fewer.
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