But this very industry, the proofs of
which he would each evening bring down the wood for that fine judgment
of Beatrice's, which, in spite of all, still remained more to him than
any other praise--this very industry was the secret confirmation for
Beatrice's sad heart. No longer the inspirer, she was yet, she bitterly
told herself, honoured among women as a critic. Her heart might bleed,
and her eyes fill with tears, as he read; but then, as he would say, the
Beauty, the Music! Is it Beautiful? Is it Music? If it be that, no
matter how it has been made! Let us give thanks for creation, though it
involves the sacrifice of our own most tender and sacred feelings. To
set mere personal feelings against Beauty--human tears against an
immortal creation! Did he spare his own feelings? Indeed he did not.
On the night when we first met him bidding good-bye to Silencieux "until
the rising of the moon," he had sat through dinner eating but little,
feverishly and somewhat cruelly gay. Though he was as yet too kind to
admit it to himself, Beatrice was beginning to bore him, not merely by
her sadness, which his absorption prevented his realising except in
flashes, but by her very resemblance to the Image--of which, from having
been the beloved original, she was, in his eyes, becoming an indifferent
materialisation.
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