the features, I might have been beholding in a mirror the image of life.

Her figure was very slim and strong, and of a just proportion; red

tresses lay like a crown over her brow; her eyes, of a very golden brown,

held mine with a look; and her face, which was perfectly shaped, was yet

marred by a cruel, sullen, and sensual expression. Something in both

face and figure, something exquisitely intangible, like the echo of an

echo, suggested the features and bearing of my guide; and I stood awhile,

unpleasantly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the resemblance.

The common, carnal stock of that race, which had been originally designed

for such high dames as the one now looking on me from the canvas, had

fallen to baser uses, wearing country clothes, sitting on the shaft and

holding the reins of a mule cart, to bring home a lodger. Perhaps an

actual link subsisted; perhaps some scruple of the delicate flesh that

was once clothed upon with the satin and brocade of the dead lady, now

winced at the rude contact of Felipe's frieze.

The first light of the morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as I

lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell upon it with growing complacency;

its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one

after another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to sign

and seal one's own sentence of degeneration, I still knew that, if she

were alive, I should love her. Day after day the double knowledge of her

wickedness and of my weakness grew clearer. She came to be the heroine

of many day-dreams, in which her eyes led on to, and sufficiently

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