raced him; and the heart
desired him. Gwynplaine was no longer deformed. He was beloved. The rose
demanded the caterpillar in marriage, feeling that within the
caterpillar there was a divine butterfly. Gwynplaine the rejected was
chosen. To have one's desire is everything. Gwynplaine had his, Dea
hers.

The abjection of the disfigured man was exalted and dilated into
intoxication, into delight, into belief; and a hand was stretched out
towards the melancholy hesitation of the blind girl, to guide her in her
darkness.

It was the penetration of two misfortunes into the ideal which absorbed
them. The rejected found a refuge in each other. Two blanks, combining,
filled each other up. They held together by what they lacked: in that in
which one was poor, the other was rich. The misfortune of the one made
the treasure of the other. Had Dea not been blind, would she have chosen
Gwynplaine? Had Gwynplaine not been disfigured, would he have preferred
Dea? She would probably have rejected the deformed, as he would have
passed by the infirm. What happiness for Dea that Gwynplaine was
hideous! What good fortune for Gwynplaine that Dea was blind! Apart from
their providential matching, they were impossible to each other. A
mighty want of each other was at the bottom of their loves, Gwynplaine
saved Dea. Dea saved Gwynplaine. Apposition of misery produced
adherence. It was the embrace of those swallowed in the abyss; none
closer, none more hopeless, none more exquisite.

Gwynplaine had a thought--"What should I be without her?" Dea had a
thought--"What should I be without him?" The exile of each made a
country for both. The two incurable fatalities, the stigmata of
Gwynplaine and the blindness of Dea, joined them together in
contentment. They sufficed to each other. They imagined nothing beyond
each other. To speak to one another was a delight, to approach was
beatitude; by force of reciprocal intuition they became united in the
same reverie, and thought the same thoughts. In Gwynplaine's tread Dea
believed that she heard the step of one deified. They tightened their
mutual grasp in a sort of sidereal _chiaroscuro_, full of perfumes, of
gleams, of music, of the luminous architecture of dreams. They belonged
to each other; they knew themselves to be for ever united in the same
joy and the same ecstasy; and nothing could be stranger than this
construction of an Eden by two of the damned.

They were inexpressibly happy. In their h