The Worshipper of the Image by Richard Le Gallienne
page 9 of 82 (10%)
page 9 of 82 (10%)
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then thought--it was no living thing, but just a plaster cast among the
others, that was thus shining, like a star among the dead. A face not ancient, not modern; but a face of yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Instantly he knew he had seen the face before. Where? Why, of course, it was the face of Beatrice, feature for feature. How strange!--and, loving Beatrice, he bought it, because of his great love for her! Who was the artist, what the time and circumstance, that had anticipated in this strange fashion the only face he had ever really loved on earth? He sought information of the shopkeeper, who told him a strange little story of an unknown model and an unknown artist, and two tragic fates. When Antony had brought Silencieux home to Beatrice, she had at first taken that delight in her which every created thing takes in a perfect, or even an imperfect, reflection of itself. To have been anticipated in a manner so unusual gave back in romantic suggestiveness what at first sight it seemed to steal from one's personal originality. Only at first sight--for, if like Beatrice, you were the possessor of a face so uncommon in type that your lover might, with little fear of disproof, declare, at all events in England, that there was none other like it, you might grow superstitious as you looked at an anticipation so creepily identical, and conceive strange fancies of re-incarnation. What if this had been you in some former existence! Or at all events, if there is any truth in those who tell us that in the mould and lines of our faces and hands--yes! and in every secret marking of our bodies--our fates are written as in a parchment; would it not be reasonable to surmise, perhaps to fear, that the writing should mean the same on one |
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