I remember, too, a gaunt house, scorching in the sun, and a window which flashed and then shut! The window stayed shut, like a slab.

All the world was silent; and that splendid living being was walled up there.

And last, I have recollection of an evening when, in the bluish and dark green and chalky landscape of the town and its rounded gardens, I saw that window lighted up.

A narrow glimmer of rose and gold was enframed there, and I could distinguish, leaning on the sill that overhung the town, in the heart of that resplendence, a feminine form which stirred before my eyes in inaccessible forbearance.

Long did I watch with shaking knees that window dawning upon space, as the shepherd watches the rising of Venus.