When she had passed along a certain distance, a shiver seized her, and her instinct pushed her toward the lighted shops, where there were pictures.  In one she saw the portrait of that Queen of Song whom she had heard at Besworth.  Two young men, glancing as they walked by arm in arm, pronounced the name of the great enchantress, and hummed one of her triumphant airs.  The features expressed health, humour, power, every fine animal faculty.  Genius was on the forehead and the plastic mouth; the forehead being well projected, fair, and very shapely, showing clear balance, as well as capacity to grasp flame, and fling it.  The line reaching to a dimple from the upper lip was saved from scornfulness by the lovely gleam, half-challenging, half-consoling, regal, roguish—­what you would—­that sat between her dark eyelashes, like white sunlight on the fringed smooth roll of water by a weir.  Such a dimple, and such a gleam of eyes, would have been keys to the face of a weakling, and it was the more fascinating from the disregard of any minor charm notable upon this grand visage, which could not suffer a betrayal.  You saw, and there was no effort to conceal, that the spirit animating it was intensely human; but it was human of the highest chords of humanity, indifferent to finesse and despising subtleties; gifted to speak, to inspire, and to command all great emotions.  In fact, it was the masque of a dramatic artist in repose.  Tempered by beauty, the robust frame showed that she possessed a royal nature, and could, as a foremost qualification for Art, feel harmoniously.  She might have many of the littlenesses of which women are accused; for Art she promised unspotted excellence; and, adorable as she was by attraction of her sex, she was artist over all.

Emilia found herself on one of the bridges, thinking of this aspect.  Beneath her was the stealing river, with its red intervals, and the fog had got a wider circle.  She could not disengage that face from her mind.  It seemed to say to her, boldly, “I live because success is mine;” and to hint, as with a paler voice, “Death the fruit of failure.”  Could she, Emilia, ever be looked on again by her friends?  The dread of it gave her shudders.  Then, death was certainly easy!  But death took no form in her imagination, as it does to one seeking it.  She desired to forget and to hide her intolerable losses; to have the impostor she felt herself to be buried.  As she walked along she held out her hands, murmuring, “Helpless! useless!” It came upon her as a surprise that one like herself should be allowed to live.  “I don’t want to,” she said; and the neat moment, “I wonder what a drowned woman is like?” She hurried back to the streets and the shops.  The shops failed now to give her distraction, for a stiff and dripping image floated across all the windows, and she was glad to see the shutters being closed; though, when the streets were dark, some friendliness seemed to have gone.  When the streets were quits dark, save for the row of lamps, she walked fast, fearing she knew not what.