hardly seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face,
a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were
violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose.
She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life.
You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty,
mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could
hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me.
And her voice--I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first,
with deep mellow notes that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear.
Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a
distant hautboy. In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy
that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing.
There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins.
You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of
Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close
my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different.
I don't know which to follow. Why should I not love her?
Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life.
Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind,
and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom
of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips.
I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden,
disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap.
She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king,
and given him rue to wear and bitter herbs to taste of.
She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have
crushed her reedlike throat. I have seen her in every age and in
every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination.
They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them.
One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets.