The Worshipper of the Image

llustration of that law by which one love grows out of another-that law by which

come upon a sculptor's shop, oddly crowded in among Cockney carters and decaying vegetables. Faces of Greece and Rome gazed at him sud

of classic art upon his cheek, and in the company of the dead w

h a start, found that-as he then thought-it was no living thing, but just a plaster cast among the others, that was t

he had seen the

e, he bought it, because of his great love for her! Who was the artist, what the time and circumst

ld him a strange little story of an unknown mod

ke Beatrice, you were the possessor of a face so uncommon in type that your lover might, with little fear of disproof, declare, at all events in England, that there was none other like it, you might grow superstitious as you looked at an anticipation so creepily identical, and conceive strange fancies of re-incarnation. What if this had been you in some former existence!

sk back to Antony, w

but she makes me frightened. What was

d, "but he said that it was the death-mask of

laimed Beatrice, growing al

who moulded it had fallen so in love with the dead girl, t

be true,

iful,-and nothing is really be

n, the pity

beauty, surely-the very

guish. Poor girl-" and she turned again to the image as it lay upon the table,-"see how the hair

;" and with a sudden whim, Antony took the image and set it lying back on a soft cushion in a corner of

living woman weary for sleep, and softly smiling that it was near a

h his fingers, to delight himself with s

ew more and

cannot bear it. She lo

oo forcible, the image hung poised for a moment a

reamed, as Antony saved the cast fr

ice. She is only plaster. I

eems so alive-so evil, so cruel. I am sorry you bought her, Antony. I cannot bear to look at her. Won't you take her away? Ta

rical, and Antony

would affect you so. I loved her, dear-because I love you; but I would rather break her in pieces than that she should make you unhappy.

To-morrow I shall think nothing about her. Still, dear, she does frighten me, I can't tell why. The

e was flashing his way up among the dark sounds of the black ol

pon her. How mysterious she looked, h

he made echoing fatefully in the silent wood; and when he had found a place for the image and hung

ed, the smile almost o

ed at her!-But he was growing as childish as Beatrice. Surely midnight, a dark wood, a lantern, and a death-mask, with two owls whistling to each other across t