The Man Who Laughs


google search for The Man Who Laughs

Return to Master Book Index.

Page
764 765 766 767 768

Quick Jump
1 236 472 708 944

stars. Such paroxysms raged in the mysterious dances in the grove of  
Dodona. This woman was as if transfigured--if, indeed, we can term that  
transfiguration which is the antithesis of heaven.  
Her hair quivered like a mane; her robe opened and closed. The sunshine  
of the blue eye mingled with the fire of the black one. She was  
unearthly.  
Gwynplaine, giving way, felt himself vanquished by the deep subtilty of  
this attack.  
"I love you!" she cried. And she bit him with a kiss.  
Homeric clouds were, perhaps, about to be required to encompass  
Gwynplaine and Josiana, as they did Jupiter and Juno. For Gwynplaine to  
be loved by a woman who could see and who saw him, to feel on his  
deformed mouth the pressure of divine lips, was exquisite and  
maddening. Before this woman, full of enigmas, all else faded away in  
his mind. The remembrance of Dea struggled in the shadows with weak  
cries. There is an antique bas-relief representing the Sphinx devouring  
a Cupid. The wings of the sweet celestial are bleeding between the  
fierce, grinning fangs.  
Did Gwynplaine love this woman? Has man, like the globe, two poles? Are  
we, on our inflexible axis, a moving sphere, a star when seen from afar,  
mud when seen more closely, in which night alternates with day? Has the  
heart two aspects--one on which its love is poured forth in light; the  
766  


Page
764 765 766 767 768

Quick Jump
1 236 472 708 944