The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne by Richard Le Gallienne
page 29 of 100 (28%)
page 29 of 100 (28%)
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the pearl-fisheries of a woman's eyes are his to rifle?
Beautiful, beautiful tears, flow on--no dull, leaden rain, no mere monotonous deluge, but a living, singing fountain, crowned with such rainbows as hang roses and stars in the fine mist of samite waterfalls, irradiated by gleaming shafts of lovely anger and scorn. Like Northern Lights on autumn evenings, the maiden's eyes pierced Narcissus through and through with many-coloured spears. There was thunder, too; the earth shook--just a little: but soon Narcissus saw the white dove of peace flying to him through the glancing showers. For all her sorrow, his was the peace of confession. His little lie had been acknowledged, his treason self-betrayed. And it was this. I have hinted that Narcissus, like the Catholic Church, worshipped many saints. At this time, one of them, by a thrilling coincidence, chanced to have her shrine at a boarding-school, some fifteen miles or so from the mill-pond on whose banks the Miller's Daughter had drawn into her lovely face so much of the beauty of the world. Alice Sunshine, shall we call her, was perhaps more of a cherub than a saint; a rosy, laughing, plump little arrangement of sunshiny pink and white flesh, with blue eyes and golden hair. Alice was not overburdened with intellectuality, and, like others of her sex, her heart was nothing like so soft as her bosom. Narcissus had first been in love with her sister; but he and the sister--a budding woman of the world--had soon agreed that they were not born for each other, and Narcissus had made the transfer of his tragic passion with inexpensive informality. As the late Anthony Trollope would finish one novel to-night, and begin another to-morrow morning, so would |
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