In a Pair of Eyes 267 



or amethyst or emerald, we feel the comparison 

 a blasphemy ? Why should we find them deeper 

 than the sea, deeper than the day, deep even 

 as the night of Space, with its scintillant mist of 

 suns ? Certainly not because of mere wild fancy. 

 These thoughts, these feelings, must spring from 

 some actual perception of the marvellous, 

 some veritable revelation of the unspeakable. 

 There is, in very truth, one brief hour of life 

 during which the world holds for us nothing so 

 wonderful as a pair of eyes. And then, while 

 looking into them, we discover a thrill of awe 

 vibrating through our delight, awe made by 

 a something felt rather than seen : a latency, a 

 power, a shadowing of depth unfathomable as 

 the cosmic Ether. It is as though, through some 

 intense and sudden stimulation of vital being, we 

 had obtained for one supercelestial moment 

 the glimpse of a reality, never before imagined, 

 and never again to be revealed. 



There is, indeed, an illusion. We seem to 

 view the divine ; but this divine itself, whereby 

 we are dazzled and duped, is a ghost. Not to 

 actuality belongs the spell, not to anything 

 that is, but to some infinite composite phan- 

 tom of what has been. Wondrous the vision 



