She will use and enjoy both of them in future
as best she can; but she will never again drudge in their
laboratories. You say that she might at least have married a
gentleman. But the gentlemen she knows are either amateurs of the
arts, having the egotism of professional artists without their
ability, or they are men of pleasure, which means that they are
dancers, tennis-players, butchers, and gamblers. I leave the
nonentities out of the question. Now, in the eyes of a phoenix, a
prize-fighter is a hero in comparison with a wretch who sets a leash
of greyhounds upon a hare. Imagine, now, this poor phoenix meeting
with a man who had never been guilty of self-analysis in his
life--who complained when he was annoyed, and exulted when he was
glad, like a child (and unlike a modern man)--who was honest and
brave, strong and beautiful. You open your eyes, Lucian: you do not
do justice to Cashel's good looks. He is twenty-five, and yet there
is not a line in his face. It is neither thoughtful, nor poetic, nor
wearied, nor doubting, nor old, nor self-conscious, as so many of
his contemporaries' faces are--as mine perhaps is. The face of a
pagan god, assured of eternal youth, and absolutely disqualified
from comprehending 'Faust.
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