IT would be better for my purpose if you could hear the little clear arpeggios of an obsolete music box, the notes as sweet as barley sugar; for then the mood of Rosemary Roselle might steal imperceptibly into your heart. It is made of daguerreotypes blurring on their misted silver; tenebrous lithographs—solemn façades of brick with classic white lanterns lifted against the inky smoke of a burning city; the pages of a lady's book, elegant engravings of hooped and gallooned females; and the scent of crumbled flowers.
Such intangible sources must of necessity be fragile—a perfume linked to a thin chime, elusive faces on the shadowy mirror of the past, memories of things not seen but felt in poignant unfathomable emotions. This is a magic different from that of to-day; here perhaps are only some wistful ghosts brought back among contemptuous realities—a man in a faded blue uniform with a face drawn by suffering long ended, a girl whose charm, like the flowers, is dust.
It is all as remote as a smile remembered from youth. Such apparent trifles often hold a steadfast loveliness more enduring than the greatest tragedies and successes. They are irradiated by an imperishable romance: this is my desire—to hold out an immaterial glamour, a vapor, delicately colored by old days in which you may discover the romantic and amiable shapes of secret dreams.
