bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of
Georgiana's beauty and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it
would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains
which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the
Eve of Powers[2] to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark
did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing
it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal
loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,--for
he thought little or nothing of the matter before,--Aylmer discovered
that this was the case with himself.

Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found aught
else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the
prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
emotion that throbbed within her heart; but, seeing her otherwise so
perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful
object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's
beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.