He had dismissed the dreams from his mind; he had burnt the letter.  He had, as far as lay in his power, banished the remembrance of her from his thoughts and dreams.  He no longer thought of her.  He had forgotten her....

Again he saw her, and saw her terrible in power.  His breath came in short catches.  He felt as if he were in a storm-driven cloud.  He looked.  This woman before him!  Was it possible?  At the theatre a duchess; here a nereid, a nymph, a fairy.  Always an apparition.  He tried to fly, but felt the futility of the attempt.  His eyes were riveted on the vision, as though he were bound.  Was she a woman?  Was she a maiden?  Both.  Messalina was perhaps present, though invisible, and smiled, while Diana kept watch.

Over all her beauty was the radiance of inaccessibility.  No purity could compare with her chaste and haughty form.  Certain snows, which have never been touched, give an idea of it—­such as the sacred whiteness of the Jungfrau.  Immodesty was merged in splendour.  She felt the security of an Olympian, who knew that she was daughter of the depths, and might say to the ocean, “Father!” And she exposed herself, unattainable and proud, to everything that should pass—­to looks, to desires, to ravings, to dreams; as proud in her languor, on her boudoir couch, as Venus in the immensity of the sea-foam.

She had slept all night, and was prolonging her sleep into the daylight; her boldness, begun in shadow, continued in light.

Gwynplaine shuddered.  He admired her with an unhealthy and absorbing admiration, which ended in fear.  Misfortunes never come singly.  Gwynplaine thought he had drained to the dregs the cup of his ill-luck.  Now it was refilled.  Who was it who was hurling all those unremitting thunderbolts on his devoted head, and who had now thrown against him, as he stood trembling there, a sleeping goddess?  What! was the dangerous and desirable object of his dream lurking all the while behind these successive glimpses of heaven?  Did these favours of the mysterious tempter tend to inspire him with vague aspirations and confused ideas, and overwhelm him with an intoxicating series of realities proceeding from apparent impossibilities?  Wherefore did all the shadows conspire against him, a wretched man; and what would become of him, with all those evil smiles of fortune beaming on him?  Was his temptation prearranged?  This woman, how and why was she there?  No explanation!  Why him?  Why her?  Was he made a peer of England expressly for this duchess?  Who had brought them together?  Who was the dupe?  Who the victim?  Whose simplicity was being abused?  Was it God who was being deceived?  All these undefined thoughts passed confusedly, like a flight of dark shadows, through his brain.  That magical and malevolent abode, that strange and prison-like palace, was it also in the plot?  Gwynplaine suffered a partial unconsciousness.  Suppressed emotions threatened to strangle him.  He was weighed down by an overwhelming force.  His will became powerless.  How could he resist?  He was incoherent and entranced.  This time he felt he was becoming irremediably insane.  His dark, headlong fall over the precipice of stupefaction continued.