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