woman who was not blind! And who was this woman? An ugly
one? No; a beauty. A gipsy? No; a duchess!

What was it all about, and what could it all mean? What peril in such a
triumph! And how was he to help plunging into it headlong?

What! that woman! The siren, the apparition, the lady in the visionary
box, the light in the darkness! It was she! Yes; it was she!

The crackling of the fire burst out in every part of his frame. It was
the strange, unknown lady, she who had previously so troubled his
thoughts; and his first tumultuous feelings about this woman returned,
heated by the evil fire. Forgetfulness is nothing but a palimpsest: an
incident happens unexpectedly, and all that was effaced revives in the
blanks of wondering memory.

Gwynplaine thought that he had dismissed that image from his
remembrance, and he found that it was still there; and she had put her
mark in his brain, unconsciously guilty of a dream. Without his
suspecting it, the lines of the engraving had been bitten deep by
reverie. And now a certain amount of evil had been done, and this train
of thought, thenceforth, perhaps, irreparable, he took up again eagerly.
What! she desired him! What! the princess descend from her throne, the
idol from its shrine, the statue from its pedestal, the phantom from its
cloud! What! from the depths of the impossible had this chimera come!
This deity of the sky! This irradiation! This nereid all glistening
with jewels! This proud and unattainable beauty, from the height of her
radiant throne, was bending down to Gwynplaine! What! had she drawn up
her chariot of the dawn, with its yoke of turtle-doves and dragons,
before Gwynplaine, and said to him, "Come!" What! this terrible glory of
being the object of such abasement from the empyrean, for Gwynplaine!
This woman, if he could give that name to a form so starlike and
majestic, this woman proposed herself, gave herself, delivered herself
up to him! Wonder of wonders! A goddess prostituting herself for him!
The arms of a courtesan opening in a cloud to clasp him to the bosom of
a goddess, and that without degradation! Such majestic creatures cannot
be sullied. The gods bathe themselves pure in light; and this goddess
who came to him knew what she was doing. She was not ignorant of the
incarnate hideousness of Gwynplaine. She had seen the mask which was his
face; and that mask had not caused her to draw back. Gwynplaine was
loved notwithstanding it!

Here was a th