lips forsook,
And her bent forehead worked with troubled thought."

The beautiful face of the reclining figure was dreamily hopeless and
dejected, yet pathetically patient; and, in the strange amber light
reflected from a sunset sea, the fringy shadow of a cluster of
fern-leaves seemed to quiver over the pale brow and still mouth, and
floating raven hair, where the green snake glided with crest erect and
forked tongue within an inch of one delicate, pearly ear. The gray
stones of the lichen-spotted wall, the graceful sweep of the shrouding
drab drapery, whose folds clung to the form and thence swung down from
the edge of the rocky battlement, the mouldering ruins leaning against
the quiet sky in the rear, and the glassy stretch of topaz-tinted sea
in the foreground, were all painted with pre-Raphaelite exactness and
verisimilitude, and every detail attested the careful, tender study,
with which the picture had been elaborated.

Was it by accident or design that the woman on the painted wall bore a
vague, mournful resemblance to the owner and creator? Dr. Grey glanced
from Durer's "Melancholy" to the canvas on the easel; then his
fascinated eyes dwelt on the dainty features of the artist, and he
thought involuntarily of another Coleridgean image,--of the "pilgrim
in whom the spring and the autumn, and the melancholy of both, seemed
to have combined."

"Mrs. Gerome, in this wonderful embodiment of Coleridge's fragmentary
ideal you have painted your own portrait."

"No, sir. Look again. My 'Melancholia' has a patient face, hinting of
possible peace. When I design its companion, 'Desolation,' I may be
pardoned if my canvas reflects what always fronts it."

"May I ask when you wrought out this extraordinary conception?"

"During the past month. The last touch was given this morning, and the
paint is not yet dry on that cluster of purplish seaweed clinging to
the base of the battlement. Last night I dreamed that Coleridge stood
looking over my shoulder and while I worked he touched the sea, and it
flushed a ruby red brighter than laudanum; and then he leaned down,
and with a pencil wrote _Dele_ across the fragment in his Sibylline
Leaves.' To-day I tried the effect of the hint, but the amber water
mellows the woman's features, and the ruby light rendered them sullen
and rigid."

"Were I to judge from the _bizarre_ themes that you select, I should
be tempted to fear that the wizard spell of opium evoked some of thes