look and gave him nothing; nothing;—not even retreat; not even denial. The nature he summoned was passive; it yielded itself up to his quest. Mademoiselle Ludérac's eyes, though they neither retreated nor denied, met his force with an equal potency.
All about her, last night, golden forms had been ranged, falling into a halo around her remote, melodious figure; daffodils, the colour of light, candleflames, the colour of daffodils, and the golden strings of her majestic instrument. The picture she made was there, waiting for him, and he would have possessed it had he but the key;—her eyes, her face. No;—he walked on and on;—he could not evoke it. He could only feel, not see it. Her gaze flowed from her eyes like the music from under her fingers, giving him a sense of breathlessness, of pain. It was as if he sought to take a daffodil into his hand and found that it was a flame.
But not only the opposing forces of her soul had thus baffled and blinded his memory. The music had been there and he could not listen while he saw, or see while he listened. With a sense of relief yet of haste, or pursuit, his thought plunged down another labyrinth. It had been the music, then, rather than her eyes. It was slight, it was thin, that music for Eurydice, but as he had listened it had brought back an old anguish. What was the sense of a lack in things that had haunted him since boyhood? This thirst for the reality under the appearance? Again and again he had evoked from enigmatic earth her essential harmonies, only to find when, in weariness and joy, he sought to
