ell they had created heaven.
Such was thy power, O Love! Dea heard Gwynplaine's laugh; Gwynplaine saw
Dea's smile. Thus ideal felicity was found, the perfect joy of life was
realized, the mysterious problem of happiness was solved; and by whom?
By two outcasts.

For Gwynplaine, Dea was splendour. For Dea, Gwynplaine was presence.
Presence is that profound mystery which renders the invisible world
divine, and from which results that other mystery--confidence. In
religions this is the only thing which is irreducible; but this
irreducible thing suffices. The great motive power is not seen; it is
felt.

Gwynplaine was the religion of Dea. Sometimes, lost in her sense of love
towards him, she knelt, like a beautiful priestess before a gnome in a
pagoda, made happy by her adoration.

Imagine to yourself an abyss, and in its centre an oasis of light, and
in this oasis two creatures shut out of life, dazzling each other. No
purity could be compared to their loves. Dea was ignorant what a kiss
might be, though perhaps she desired it; because blindness, especially
in a woman, has its dreams, and though trembling at the approaches of
the unknown, does not fear them all. As to Gwynplaine, his sensitive
youth made him pensive. The more delirious he felt, the more timid he
became. He might have dared anything with this companion of his early
youth, with this creature as innocent of fault as of the light, with
this blind girl who saw but one thing--that she adored him! But he would
have thought it a theft to take what she might have given; so he
resigned himself with a melancholy satisfaction to love angelically, and
the conviction of his deformity resolved itself into a proud purity.

These happy creatures dwelt in the ideal. They were spouses in it at
distances as opposite as the spheres. They exchanged in its firmament
the deep effluvium which is in infinity attraction, and on earth the
sexes. Their kisses were the kisses of souls.

They had always lived a common life. They knew themselves only in each
other's society. The infancy of Dea had coincided with the youth of
Gwynplaine. They had grown up side by side. For a long time they had
slept in the same bed, for the hut was not a large bedchamber. They lay
on the chest, Ursus on the floor; that was the arrangement. One fine
day, whilst Dea was still very little, Gwynplaine felt himself grown up,
and it was in the youth that shame arose. He said to Ursus, "I will also
sleep o