Grey had taken as his wife.
"Speak of an angel and you see his wings," said she, with exceeding
politeness. "We were just talking about you, Sir Edwin."
"Thank you; and for your charming parody on the old proverb likewise,
I hope I am not the angel of darkness anyhow."
He did not look it--this graceful, handsome young man, gifted with that
peculiar sort of beauty which you see in Goethe's face, in Byron's,
indicating what may be called the Greek temperament--the nature of
the old Attic race--sensuous, not sensual; pleasure-loving, passionate,
and changeable; not intentionally vicious, but reveling in a sort of
glorious enjoyment, intellectual and corporeal, to which every thing
else is sacrificed--in short, the heathen as opposed to the Christian type
of manhood--a type, the fascination of which lasts as long as the body
lasts, and the intellect; when these both fail, and there is left to the
man only that something which we call the soul, the immortal essence, one
with Divinity, and satisfied with nothing less than the divine--alas for
him!
A keen observer, who had lived twenty years longer in the world than
he, might, regarding him in all his beauty and youth, feel a sentiment
not unlike compassion for Edwin Uniacke.
He sat down, making himself quite at home, though this was only his
second visit to Avonside Cottage.
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