CHAPTER XIII 159
lower features a sable veil, a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone were visible. Above the temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of black drapery, vague in its character and consistency as cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with sparkles of a more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was " the likeness of a kingly crown;" what it diademed was " the shape which shape had none."
" Were you happy when you painted these pictures?" asked Mr. Rochester presently.
" I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known."
" That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, have been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist ' s dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints. Did you sit at them long each day?"
" I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat at them from morning till noon, and from noon till night: the length of the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply."
" And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent labours?"
" Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise."
" Not quite: you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no more, probably. You had not enough of the artist ' s skill and science to give it full being: yet the drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar. As to the thoughts, they are elfish. These eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream. How could you make them look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays. And what meaning is that in their solemn depth? And who taught you to paint wind? There is a high gale in that sky, and on this hill-top. Where did you see Latmos? For that is