Page:Jane Eyre (1st edition), Volume 1.djvu/251

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JANE EYRE.
243

my palette could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil could impart. Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corse glanced through the green water; a fair arm was the only limb clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or torn.

The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a hill, with grass and some leaves slanted as if by a breeze. Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky, dark-blue as at twilight: rising into the sky, was a woman's shape to the bust, pourtrayed in tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was crowned with a star; the lineaments below were seen as through the suffusion of vapour; the eyes shone dark and wild; the hair streamed shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail. On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight; the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star.

The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close