A whole romance lies there in that girdle; the woman that it used
to protect exists no longer; she is yours, she has become _you_;
henceforward any betrayal of her is a blow dealt at yourself.
In this softened mood Raphael's eyes wandered over the room, now
filled with memories and love, and where the very daylight seemed to
take delightful hues. Then he turned his gaze at last upon the
outlines of the woman's form, upon youth and purity, and love that
even now had no thought that was not for him alone, above all things,
and longed to live for ever. As his eyes fell upon Pauline, her own
opened at once as if a ray of sunlight had lighted on them.
"Good-morning," she said, smiling. "How handsome you are, bad man!"
The grace of love and youth, of silence and dawn, shone in their
faces, making a divine picture, with the fleeting spell over it all
that belongs only to the earliest days of passion, just as simplicity
and artlessness are the peculiar possession of childhood. Alas! love's
springtide joys, like our own youthful laughter, must even take
flight, and live for us no longer save in memory; either for our
despair, or to shed some soothing fragrance over us, according to the
bent of our inmost thoughts.
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