I could not call by the name of brother that half-witted lad, nor by the name of mother that immovable and lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual simper now recurred to my mind like something hateful.

And if I could not marry, what then?
She was helplessly unprotected; her eyes, in that single and long glance which had been all our intercourse, had confessed a weakness equal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for the student of the cold northern chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful lines; and this was a knowledge to disarm a brute.

To flee was more than I could find courage for; but I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection.
As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait.

It had fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes of paint.

I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in that declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference.