found her thinner; and her complexion had lost that first
freshness of youth which, like the bloom that the breath of morning
spreads over fruit, disappears at the slightest shock from without,
although it may have been respected by the heat of the sun. Yet in this
premature paleness and in this somewhat unhealthy thinness there seemed
to be an indefinable charm; her eyes, more sunken, but inscrutable as
ever, showed less pride and more melancholy than of old; her mouth
had become more mobile, and her smile was more delicate and less
contemptuous. When she spoke to me, I seemed to behold two persons in
her, the old and the new; and I found that, so far from having lost her
beauty, she had attained ideal perfection. Still, I remember several
persons at that time used to declare that she had "changed very much,"
which with them meant that she had greatly deteriorated. Beauty,
however, is like a temple in which the profane see naught but the
external magnificence. The divine mystery of the artist's thought
reveals itself only to profound sympathy, and the inspiration in each
detail of the sublime work remains unseen by the eyes of the vulgar. One
of your modern authors, I fancy, has said this in other words and much
better. As for myself, at no moment in her life did I find Edmee less
beautiful than at any other. Even in the hours of suffering, when beauty
in its material sense seems obliterated, hers but assumed a divine
form in my eyes, and in her face I beheld the splendour of a new moral
beauty. However, I am but indifferently endowed with artistic feeling,
and had I been a painter, I could not have created more than a single
type, that which filled my whole soul; for in the course of my long life
only one woman has seemed to me really beautiful; and that woman was
Edmee.

For a few seconds I stood looking at her, so touchingly pale, sad yet
calm, a living image of filial piety, of power in thrall to affection.
Then I rushed forward and fell at her feet without being able to say a
word. She uttered no cry, no exclamation of surprise, but took my head
in her two arms and held it for some time pressed to her bosom. In this
strong pressure, in this silent joy I recognised the blood of my race,
I felt the touch of a sister. The good chevalier, who had waked with a
start, stared at us in astonishment, his body bent forward and his elbow
resting on his knee; then he said:

"Well, well! What is the meaning of this?"

He co