mother that immovable
and lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual simper now
recurred to my mind like something hateful. And if I could not marry,
what then? She was helplessly unprotected; her eyes, in that single and
long glance which had been all our intercourse, had confessed a weakness
equal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for the student of the cold
northern chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful lines; and this was a
knowledge to disarm a brute. To flee was more than I could find courage
for; but I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection.

As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait. It had
fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes of
paint. I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in
that declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference. I
remembered how it had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life, a
creature rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature, and
I marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of Olalla. Beauty I
had seen before, and not been charmed, and I had been often drawn to
women, who were not beautiful except to me; but in Olalla all that I
desired and had not dared to imagine was united.

I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached and my eyes longed for
her, as men long for morning. But the day after, when I returned, about
my usual hour, she was once more on the gallery, and our looks once more
met and embraced. I would have spoken, I would have drawn near to her;
but strongly as she plucked at my heart, drawing me like a magnet,
something yet more imperious withheld me; and I could only bow and pass
by; and she, leaving my salutation unanswered, only followed me with her
noble eyes.

I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it
seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of
her mother's coquetry, and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I
know she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a
cunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice
stood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in spite of the
poverty of the house, a gold coin, hanging by a ribbon, lay on her brown
bosom. These were proofs, had any been needed, of her inborn delight in
life and her own loveliness. On the other hand, in her eyes that hung
upon mine, I could read depth be