These gave her much help in restoring
her mind to quietness. Their perfect beauty entranced her, and the
rapturous purity of ideal passion, the mystic delicacies of emotion,
which made every verse gleam like a star, held her for the time high
above that gloomy cloudland of her being, rife with weird shapes and
muffled voices. That Beauty is solace of life, and Love the end of
being,--this faith she would cling to in spite of all; she grasped
it with the desperate force of one who dreaded lest it should fade
and fail from her. Beauty alone would not suffice; too often it was
perceived as a mere mask, veiling horrors; but in the passion and
the worship of love was surely a never-failing fountain of growth
and power; this the draught that would leave no bitter aftertaste,
its enjoyment the final and all-sufficient answer to the riddle of
life. Rossetti put into utterance for her so much that she had not
dared to entrust even to the voice of thought. Her spirit and flesh
became one and indivisible; the old antagonism seemed at an end for
ever.
Such dreamings as these naturally heightened Maud's dislike for the
kind of life her mother led, and she longed unspeakably for the time
of her return to London.
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