With a laugh Margaret remonstrated, but secretly she was not
displeased. She was aware that his passion for this figure was due, not
to its intrinsic beauty, but to a likeness he had discovered in it to
herself.
It stood in that fair wide gallery where is the mocking faun, with his
inhuman savour of fellowship with the earth which is divine, and the
sightless Homer. The goddess had not the arrogance of the huntress who
loved Endymion, nor the majesty of the cold mistress of the skies. She
was in the likeness of a young girl, and with collected gesture fastened
her cloak. There was nothing divine in her save a sweet strange spirit
of virginity. A lover in ancient Greece, who offered sacrifice before
this fair image, might forget easily that it was a goddess to whom he
knelt, and see only an earthly maid fresh with youth and chastity and
loveliness. In Arthur's eyes Margaret had all the exquisite grace of the
statue, and the same unconscious composure; and in her also breathed the
spring odours of ineffable purity. Her features were chiselled with
the clear and divine perfection of this Greek girl's; her ears were as
delicate and as finely wrought.
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