e.

Thus stood Bella before the portrait to which she still delayed to put
the finishing touch, inwardly chafing, and thoroughly vexed with
herself. She, the mature in experience, to be the subject of such a
girlish infatuation! "girlish infatuation," she called it, and yet she
could not free herself from it. Was it because her self-love was
wounded; was it because, for the first time, she had stretched out her
hand and it was not taken?

Her large eyes sparkled, and whoever had beheld her now would have seen
the Medusa-look.

She left the studio with all speed, and went to her dressing-room. She
stood there before the large mirror, and let down her luxuriant hair,
staring into the mirror, while upon her closely pressed lips lay the
question. Art thou then so old? She opened her lips, like one ill with
fever, like one parched with thirst, panting to drink. Her eyes beamed
with a joyous brightness, as she said to herself: Thou art beautiful.
Thou art able to judge of thyself as impartially as thou wouldest a
stranger. But what means this silly infatuation?

She took the long tresses of her hair in both hands, and held them
crossed under her chin; she was terrified as she now perceived, for the
first time, how strong a likeness she bore to the bust of Medusa in the
guest-chamber above.

"Yes, I will be Medusa! He shall be shattered, turned into stone,
annihilated! He shall kneel to me, and then I will trample him under my
feet!" She raised her foot, but immediately covered her face with both
hands, while tears flowed from her eyes.

"Forgive, forgive my pride, my madness!" was the cry uttered within
her. Fierce irritation and passionate emotion, pride and humility,
contended together within her breast, and it seemed as if the chill of
that morning serenade had been all at once removed, and the heart had
unfolded itself, as some long-closed calyx unfolds its petals. A
longing sprang up within her--a longing for home, as in some wayward
child who has run away from its parents into the woods--a longing for
some place of shelter and rest,--a home: where is it? where?

She yearned for a soul to which she could lay open all her own soul.

"Forgive me! forgive!" was echoed and re-echoed within her. At first it
was directed to Clodwig, and now to Eric.

"Forgive! forgive my pride! But thou canst not know how proud I have
been: and I sacrificed to thee more than a thousand others, more than
the whole world, can even co