Suddenly there would emerge
from this tangle of memory, with singular precision, some phrase of
hers, an inflection of her voice, an attitude, a glance, the seat where
they had sat, the finale of the Beethoven sonata, a burst of melody from
Mary Dyce, the face of the footman who had held back the
_portiere_--anything that happened to have caught his attention at the
moment--and these images obscured by their extreme vividness the actual
life around him. He pleaded with her; said to her in thought what he
would say to her in reality by and by.
Arrived in his own rooms, he ordered tea of his man-servant, installed
himself in front of the fire and gave himself up to the fictions of his
hope and his desire. He took the little jewelled skull out of its case
and examined it carefully. The tiny diamond teeth flashed back at him in
the firelight, and the rubies lit up the shadowy orbits. Behind the
smooth ivory brow time pulsed unceasingly--_Ruit Hora_. Who was the
artist who had contrived for his Hippolyta so superb and bold a fantasy
of Death, at a period too when the masters of enamelling had been wont
to ornament with tender idylls the little watches destined to warn
Coquette of the time of the rendezvous in the parks of Watteau? The
modelling gave evidence of a masterly hand--vigorous and full of
admirable style; altogether it was worthy of a fifteenth century artist
as forcible as Verrocchio.
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