The Worshipper of the Image by Richard Le Gallienne
page 10 of 82 (12%)
page 10 of 82 (12%)
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face as on the other, and the fates as well as the faces prove
identical? Beatrice gave the mask back to Antony, with a little shiver. "It is very wonderful, very strange, but she makes me frightened. What was the story the man told you, Antony?" "No doubt it was all nonsense," Antony replied, "but he said that it was the death-mask of an unknown girl found drowned in the Seine." "Drowned in the Seine!" exclaimed Beatrice, growing almost as white as the image. "Yes! and he said too that the story went that the sculptor who moulded it had fallen so in love with the dead girl, that he had gone mad and drowned himself in the Seine also." "Can it be true, Antony?" "I hope so, for it is so beautiful,--and nothing is really beautiful till it has come true." "But the pain, the pity of it--Antony." "That is a part of the beauty, surely--the very essence of its beauty--" "Beauty! beauty! O Antony, that is always your cry. I can only think of the terror, the human anguish. Poor girl--" and she turned again to the image as it lay upon the table,--"see how the hair lies moulded round |
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