Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/78

58 Midnight had just struck in the five parishes of Southwark, with the different intervals and tones of their various bells. Gwynplaine was dreaming of Dea. Of whom else should he dream? But that evening, feeling singularly troubled, and full of a charm which was at the same time a pang, he was thinking of Dea as a man thinks of a woman. He reproached himself for this. It seemed to be a lack of respect to her. Sweet and imperious impatience! He was crossing the invisible barrier, on one side of which stands the virgin, on the other, the wife. He questioned himself anxiously. A blush, as it were, overspread his mind. The Gwynplaine of long ago had been transformed by degrees and unconsciously. The modest youth was becoming strangely agitated. We have an ear of light, into which the spirit speaks; and an ear of darkness, into which the instinct speaks. Into the latter strange voices were now whispering. However pure-minded the youth may be who dreams of love, a certain grossness of the flesh eventually comes between him and his dream. Intentions lose their transparency. The secret desires implanted by nature will make themselves heard. Gwynplaine felt an indescribable yearning of the flesh, and Dea was scarcely flesh. In this fever, which he knew to be unhealthy, he transfigured Dea into a more material aspect, and tried to exaggerate her seraphic form into feminine loveliness. It is thou, woman, that we require.

Love will not permit too much of paradise. It requires the fevered skin, the troubled life, the unbound hair, the electrical and irreparable kiss, the clasp of desire. The sidereal is embarrassing, the ethereal is cumbersome. Too much of the heavenly in love is like too much fuel on a fire,—the flame suffers from it. Gwynpiaine fell into an exquisite reverie,—Dea to be