There are a thousand women on the earth
the artist might call as lovely,--show me another that I can worship.
_Andre_. Worship! This is Captain Everard Maitland. If I should shut my
eyes now----
_Mait_. Well, go on; but I tell you, ne'ertheless, there have been
times, even in this very spot,--we often wandered here when the day was
dying as it is now,--here in her soft, breathing loveliness, she has
stood beside me, when I have,--_worshipped?_--nay, feared her, in her
holy beauty, as we two should an angel who should come through that
glade to us now.
_Andre_. True it is, something of the Divinity there is in beauty, that,
in its intenser forms, repels with all its winningness, until the
lowliness of love looks through it. Well--you worshipped her.
_Mait_. Nay, you have told the rest. I would have worshipped; but one
day there came a look from those beautiful eyes, when I met them
suddenly, with a gaze that sought the mystery of their beauty,--a single
look, and in an instant the drooping lash had buried it forever; but I
knew, ere it fell, that the world of her young being was all mine
already. Another life had been forever added unto mine; a whole
creation; yet, like Eden's fairest, it but made another perfect; a new
and purer _self_; and in it grew the heaven, and the fairy-land of my
old dreams, lovelier than ever.
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