"Who lives, he dies; who dies, he is alive."
One evening, as he stood gazing on his treasure, he thought he
saw a faint expression of self-consciousness on her countenance, as if
she surmised that passionate eyes were fixed upon her. This grew; till
at last the red blood rose over her neck, and cheek, and brow. Cosmo's
longing to approach her became almost delirious. This night she was
dressed in an evening costume, resplendent with diamonds. This could add
nothing to her beauty, but it presented it in a new aspect; enabled her
loveliness to make a new manifestation of itself in a new embodiment.
For essential beauty is infinite; and, as the soul of Nature needs an
endless succession of varied forms to embody her loveliness, countless
faces of beauty springing forth, not any two the same, at any one of
her heart-throbs; so the individual form needs an infinite change of its
environments, to enable it to uncover all the phases of its loveliness.
Diamonds glittered from amidst her hair, half hidden in its luxuriance,
like stars through dark rain-clouds; and the bracelets on her white arms
flashed all the colours of a rainbow of lightnings, as she lifted her
snowy hands to cover her burning face. But her beauty shone down all its
adornment. "If I might have but one of her feet to kiss," thought Cosmo,
"I should be content." Alas! he deceived himself, for passion is never
content. Nor did he know that there are TWO ways out of her enchanted
house. But, suddenly, as if the pang had been driven into his heart
from without, revealing itself first in pain, and afterwards in definite
form, the thought darted into his mind, "She has a lover somewhere.
Remembered words of his bring the colour on her face now. I am nowhere
to her. She lives in another world all day, and all night, after she
leaves me. Why does she come and make me love her, till I, a strong man,
am too faint to look upon her more?" He looked again, and her face was
pale as a lily. A sorrowful compassion seemed to rebuke the glitter of
the restless jewels, and the slow tears rose in her eyes. She left her
room sooner this evening than was her wont. Cosmo remained alone, with a
feeling as if his bosom had been suddenly left empty and hollow, and the
weight of the whole world was crushing in its walls. The next evening,
for the first time since she began to come, she came not.