During this time
he would often talk verse in his sleep, such as to Lady Joan, at
least, sometimes seemed lovely, though she never could get a hold
of it, she said; for always, just as she seemed on the point of
understanding it, he would cease, and her ears would ache with the
silence.
One warm evening, when now a good deal better, and able to sit up a
part of the day, Cosmo was lying on the sofa, watching her face as
she read. Through the age-dusted window came the glowing beams of
the setting sun, lined and dulled and blotted. They fell on her
hands, and her hands reflected them, in a pale rosy gleam, upon her
face.
"How beautiful you are in the red light, Joan!" said Cosmo.
"That's the light, not me," she returned.
"Yes, it IS you. The red light shows you more as you are. In the
dark even YOU do not look beautiful. Then you may say if you like,
'That is the dark, not me.' Don't you remember what Portia says in
The Merchant of Venice,"
'The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark
When neither is attended; and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by reason reasoned are
To their right praise and true perfection!'
"You see he says, not that beautiful things owe their beauty, but
the right seeing of their beauty, to circumstance. So the red light
makes me SEE you more beautiful--not than you are--that could not
be--but than I could see you in another light--a gray one for
instance.
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