even, and the world outspread before them for ever, and no more to
them for ever than a sight of the eyes, a hearing of the ears, a
far-away interest of the inflexible heart, not pausing, not
pitying, but austere with a holy austerity, rigid with a calm and
passionless rigidity; and I find them none the less women to the
end.

And think, if one could love a woman like that once, see her once
grow pale with passion, and once wring your lips out upon hers,
would it not be a small thing to die? Not that there is not a
passion of a quite other sort, much less epic, far more dramatic
and intimate, that comes out of the very frailty of perishable
women; out of the lines of suffering that we see written about
their eyes, and that we may wipe out if it were but for a moment;
out of the thin hands, wrought and tempered in agony to a fineness
of perception, that the indifferent or the merely happy cannot
know; out of the tragedy that lies about such a love, and the
pathetic incompleteness. This is another thing, and perhaps it is
a higher. I look over my shoulder at the three great headless
Madonnas, and they look back at me and do not move; see me, and
through and over me, the foul life of the city dying to its embers
already as the night draws on; and over miles and miles of silent
country, set here and there with lit towns, thundered through here
and there with night expresses scattering fire and smoke; and away
to the ends of the earth, and the furthest star, and the blank
regions of nothing; and they are not moved. My quiet, great-kneed,
deep-breasted, well-draped ladies of Necessity, I give my heart to
you!

R. L. S.