“Allow me to lead you to a lounge,—you seem tired.”
“Thank you, I am not tired,” answered a musical voice; and her velvety eyes drank deep at the fountain of love that flowed from his eyes. “I was far away, transported into the world evoked by this picture. I tried to divine the thoughts of this notorious beauty at the Stuarts’ Court, and the vision became so vividly real, that I could see her take up her blue scarf and raise it in front of her face as she blushed in looking at my nakedness.”
“I should have thought the model who sat for this portrait could have easily beheld our mythological world without having to lift her scarf to hide her confusion. I do not think she was renowned for the purity of her life, nor for the nicety of her language.”
“The more reason for her inability to look nature in the face. Nature is too amazing to those trained to artifice. The glory of a sunset would be blinding to those who never had seen its reflection but on houses or pavements.”
How adorably sensitive was her mouth; he remembered having seen, in Florence, expressions like hers. The divine Urbinite had excelled in delineating these touching faces.
“It is getting late. If you are thinking of leaving, will you allow me to escort you?” She laid her hand on his, and without a word they left the room.
One by one the guests returned to the secret bower to say a courteous adieu to the Marquise—a thing which formerly had not been frequently witnessed—it had been so irritating to see that perpetual grin on her lips, that incessant fanning, and, above all, to watch her sliding scale of good-byes, which had become alarmingly tedious.
The Adam and Eve of “London regained” slowly descended the marble staircase, passed through the hall, out of the front door, and found themselves on the pavement as unconcerned about their surroundings as if they had dropped straight from a planet. They gazed at each other, and in that luminous orb of the visual organ, they discovered the only world for which it was worth living or dying.
“I do not know who you are, and I do not desire to know, until you have answered my questions. This I know, that you love me; my love is too great not to be echoed by yours. What we feel for one another is above all worldly considerations, what we can give each other is beyond what the world can give or take away. Will you accept the life devotion of a man who has never loved until this day? I blush at what I used to call love—and shall never profane your ears with a recital of what men call their conquests.”