Never perhaps—so I think—were their beautiful dim eyes so earnestly strained as at that hour; those eyes dimmed by melancholy and weariness, the light of inquiry quenched in them by too long familiarity with never-changing objects: eyes dimmed by mutual pity, reflecting the forms of familiar things without mystery or variety, in hard outlines and lifeless colouring.
And suddenly each of them perceived in the other a new creature, armed for combat.
I know not if there be anything sadder than these lightning-like revelations made to tender hearts by the desire for happiness. The virtuous sisters breathed in the same circle of sorrow; the same destiny weighed upon them; and during the evenings, heavy with anxiety, one of them from time to time would lay her brow on the shoulder or the breast of another, while the darkness effaced the diversity of their faces, and fused their three souls in one. But when the prophesied guest—to their waiting hearts already appearing with the gestures of the lover who elects and who promises—was about to set foot on their deserted threshold, they lifted up their heads with a thrill, and loosed their clasped hands, and exchanged a look which had the violence of a sudden flash of lightning. And while from the depth of their troubled souls there welled up an unknown feeling which had none of the old sweetness, that one look brought them consciousness at last of all their waning grace, of the contrast between their three figures coloured by the same blood, of the spirit of night lurking in the mass of hair heaped up like a load on the nape of a white neck, of the marvellous persuasion expressed by the curve of a silent mouth, of the enchantment woven like a net by the ingenuous frequency of some inimitable gesture, and of every other magic power.
And a dim instinct of strife dismayed them.
Thus do I picture to myself those who were waiting for me in that glowing hour.
The first breath of spring, faintly warm, which had touched the dry summits of the rocks, was caressing the brows of the anxious maidens. Within the great cloister, carpeted with jonquils and violets, the fountains repeated the melodious accompaniment which for centuries the waters had made to the thoughts of voluptuousness and of wisdom expressed in the leonine verses on the pediment. On certain trees and on certain bushes the delicate leaves were shining as though coated with gum or diaphanous wax. The ancient and immovable things of time which could only decay were touched with an indefinable softness, communicated to them by the things that had power to renew themselves.
“Ah, which of us will be the chosen one?”
The three sisters, who had secretly become rivals in face of this deceptive offer of apparent life, composed their attitudes according to the inward rhythm of their natural beauty, which time had already begun to threaten. Perhaps not till that day had they understood that beauty in its true sense; just as a sick person, hearing the unaccustomed sound of the blood beating in the ear which presses the pillows, for the first time understands the portentous music which sustains his feeble frame.
But perhaps in them this rhythm had no words.