But this cannot last. As the years drop off, a certain pair of eyes beam
one day upon you that seem to have been cut out of a page of Greek
poetry. They have all its sentiment, its fire, its intellectual reaches:
it would be hard to say what they have not. The profile is a Greek
profile, and the heavy chestnut hair is plaited in Greek bands. The
figure, too, might easily be that of Helen, or of Andromache.
You gaze, ashamed to gaze; and your heart yearns, ashamed of its
yearning. It is no young girl who is thus testing you: there is too
much pride for that. A ripeness and maturity rest upon her look and
figure that completely fill up that ideal which exaggerated fancies have
wrought out of the Grecian heaven. The vision steals upon you at all
hours,--now rounding its flowing outline to the mellifluous metre of
Epic hexameter, and again with its bounding life pulsating with the
glorious dashes of tragic verse.
Yet with the exception of stolen glances and secret admiration, you keep
aloof. There is no wish to fathom what seems a happy mystery. There lies
a content in secret obeisance. Sometimes it shames you, as your mind
glows with its fancied dignity; but the heart thrusts in its voice; and,
yielding to it, you dream dreams like fond old Boccaccio's upon the
olive-shaded slopes of Italy.
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