of personal conquest. When I went back on the morrow the little
maidservant conducted me straight through the long sala
(it opened there as before in perfect perspective and was lighter now,
which I thought a good omen) into the apartment from which
the recipient of my former visit had emerged on that occasion.
It was a large shabby parlor, with a fine old painted ceiling
and a strange figure sitting alone at one of the windows.
They come back to me now almost with the palpitation
they caused, the successive feelings that accompanied my
consciousness that as the door of the room closed behind
me I was really face to face with the Juliana of some
of Aspern's most exquisite and most renowned lyrics.
I grew used to her afterward, though never completely;
but as she sat there before me my heart beat as fast as if
the miracle of resurrection had taken place for my benefit.
Her presence seemed somehow to contain his, and I felt
nearer to him at that first moment of seeing her than I ever
had been before or ever have been since. Yes, I remember
my emotions in their order, even including a curious little
tremor that took me when I saw that the niece was not there.
With her, the day before, I had become sufficiently familiar,
but it almost exceeded my courage (much as I had longed for the event)
to be left alone with such a terrible relic as the aunt.
She was too strange, too literally resurgent. Then came a check,
with the perception that we were not really face to face,
inasmuch as she had over her eyes a horrible green shade which,
for her, served almost as a mask. I believed for the instant
that she had put it on expressly, so that from underneath it
she might scrutinize me without being scrutinized herself.
At the same time it increased the presumption that there was