crimson halo that, to the gazer, surrounds the sun. How
beautiful she was! Painters, when in their chase of the
ideal they have followed it to the skies and carried off
therefrom the divine image of Our Lady, never drew near this
fabulous reality. Nor are the poet's words more adequate
than the colours of the limner. She was tall and
goddess-like in shape and port. Her soft fair hair rolled on
either side of her temples in golden streams that crowned
her as with a queen's diadem. Her forehead, white and
transparent, tinged only by blue vein-stains, stretched in
calm amplitude over two dark eyebrows--a contrast enhanced
still further by the sea-green lustre of her glittering and
unfathomable eyes. Ah, what eyes! One flash of them was
enough to settle the fate of a man. Never had I seen in
human eyes such life, such clearness, such ardour, such
humid brilliancy; and there shot from them glances like
arrows, which went straight to my heart. Whether the flame
which lit them came from hell or heaven I know not, but from
one or the other it came, most surely. No daughter of Eve
she, but an angel or a fiend, perhaps--who knows?--something
of both. The quarrelets of pearl flashed through her scarlet
smile, and as her mouth moved the dimples sank and filled by
turns in the blush-rose softness of her exquisite cheek.
Over the even smoothness of her half-uncovered shoulders
played a floating gloss as of agate, and a river of large
pearls, not greatly different in hue from her neck,
descended towards her breast. Now and then she raised her
head with a peacock-like gesture, and sent a quiver through
the ruff which enshrined her like a frame of silver
filigree.

The strange vision causes on Romuald strange yet natural effects. His
ardent aspiration for the priesthood changes to loathing. He even tries
to renounce his vows, to answer "No" to the questions to which he should
answer "Yes," and thus to comply with the apparent demand of the
stranger's eyes. But he cannot. The awe of the ceremony is yet too
strong on his soul, if not on his senses and imagination; and the fatal
words are spoken, the fatal rites gone through, despite the promises of
untold bliss which the eyes, evermore caressing and entreating, though
sadder, as the completion of the sacrifice approaches, continue to make
him.