The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter
sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close
serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in
the foreground, a head,--a colossal head, inclined towards the
iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the
forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the 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 Latmos. There! put the drawings away!"