th it
also: and he beheld his heavenly lady floating on the lull of soft white
cloud among her sister spheres. After the way of imaginative young men,
he had her features more accurately now she was hidden, and he idealized
her more. He could escape for a time from his coil of similes and paint
for himself the irids of her large, long, grey eyes darkly rimmed;
purest water-grey, lucid within the ring, beneath an arch of lashes.
He had them fast; but then he fell to contemplating their exceeding
rareness; And the mystery of the divinely grey swung a kindled fancy
to the flight with some queen-witch of woods, of whom a youth may dream
under the spell of twilights, East or West, among forest branches.

She had these marvellous eyes and the glamour for men. She had not yet
met a man with the poetical twist in the brain to prize her elementally.
All admitted the glamour; none of her courtiers were able to name it,
even the poetical head giving it a name did not think of the witch in
her looks as a witch in her deeds, a modern daughter of the mediaeval.
To her giant squire the eyes of the lady were queer: they were unlit
glass lamps to her French suppliant; and to the others, they were
attractively uncommon; the charm for them being in her fine outlines,
her stature, carriage of her person, and unalterable composure;
particularly her latent daring. She had the effect on the general mind
of a lofty crag-castle with a history. There was a whiff of gunpowder
exciting the atmosphere in the anecdotal part of the history known.

Woodseer sat for a certain time over his note-book. He closed it with a
thrilling conceit of the right thing written down; such as entomologists
feel when they have pinned the rare insect. But what is butterfly
or beetle compared with the chiselled sentences carved out of air to
constitute us part owner of the breathing image and spirit of an adored
fair woman? We repeat them, and the act of repeating them makes her come
close on ours, by virtue of the eagle thought in the stamped gold of the
lines.

Then, though she is not ever to be absolutely ours (and it is an
impoverishing desire that she should be), we have beaten out the golden
sentence--the essential she and we in one. But is it so precious after
all? A suspicious ring of an adjective drops us on a sickening descent.

The author dashed at his book, examined, approved, keenly enjoyed, and
he murderously scratched the adjective. She stood better wi