So strange it is to think of that. . . . She can think anything when such imagining is once possible to her. She can think of him as the "harsh, ill-favoured one!" For what would it have mattered—her ugliness—if he had loved her? They would have been "like as pea and pea." Ever since the world began, love has worked such spells—that is so true that she has warrant to work out this strange, new dream.
Imagine it. . . . If he had all her in his heart, as she has all him in hers! He, whose least word brought gloom or glee, who never lifted his hand in vain—that hand which will hold hers still, from over the sea . . . if, when he thinks of her, a face as beautiful as his own should rise to his imagination—with eyes as dear, a mouth like that, as bright a brow. . . .
"Till you saw yourself, while you cried ''Tis she!'"
But it will not be—and if it could be, she would not know or care, for the joy would have killed her.
Or turn it again the converse way. Supposing he could "fade to a thing like her," with the coarse hair and skin . . .
"You might turn myself!—should I know or care
When I should be dead of joy, James Lee?"
Either way it would kill her, so she may as well be gone, with her
"Love that was life, life that was love";
and there is nothing at all to remember in her. As long as she lives his words and looks will circle round her memory. If she could fancy one touch of love for her once coming in those words and looks again. . . . But the boat moves on, farther, ever farther from the little house with its four rooms and its field and fig-tree and vines—from the window, the fireside, the doorway, from the beach and cliff and rocks. All the formulas have failed but this one. This one will not fail. He is set free.