As we drew near the cottage, the clouded sun was rushing down the steepest slope of the west, and he sank while we were yet a few yards from the door. The same instant I was assailed by a cold that seemed almost a material presence, and I struggled across the threshold as if from the clutches of an icy death. A wind swelled up on the moor, and rushed at the door as with difficulty I closed it behind me. Then all was still, and I looked about me.
A candle burned on a deal table in the middle of the room, and the first thing I saw was the lid of a coffin, as I thought, set up against the wall; but it opened, for it was a door, and a woman entered. She was all in white--as white as new-fallen snow; and her face was as white as her dress, but not like snow, for at once it suggested warmth. I thought her features were perfect, but her eyes made me forget them. The life of her face and her whole person was gathered and concentrated in her eyes, where it became light. It might have been coming death that made her face luminous, but the eyes had life in them for a nation--large, and dark with a darkness ever deepening as I gazed. A whole night-heaven lay condensed in each pupil; all the stars were in its blackness, and flashed; while round it for a horizon lay coiled an iris of the eternal twilight. What any eye IS, God only knows: her eyes must have been coming direct out of his own! the still face might be a primeval perfection; the live eyes were a continuous creation.
“Here is Mr. Vane, wife!” said the raven.
“He is welcome,” she answered, in a low, rich, gentle voice. Treasures of immortal sound seemed to be buried in it.
“I knew you would be glad to see him!” added the raven.
She stood in front of the door by which she had entered, and did not come nearer.
“I fear not,” he replied; “he is neither weary nor heavy laden.”
“I have my fears it may prove precipitate.”
“I do not quite understand you,” I said, with an uneasy foreboding as to what she meant, but a vague hope of some escape. “Surely a man must do a day’s work first!”
I gazed into the white face of the woman, and my heart fluttered. She returned my gaze in silence.
“Let me first go home,” I resumed, “and come again after I have found or made, invented, or at least discovered something!”