The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (7.1895)

:4

A Seventh-story Heaven
Once upon a time, in that enchanted past where dwell all the
dreams we love best, precisely—with loving punctuality—at five
in the afternoon, a pretty girlish figure, like Persephone escaping
from the shades, stole through the rough sailors at the foot of
that sordid Jacob’s ladder and made her way to the little Heaven
at the top.
I shall not describe her, for the good reason that I cannot.
Leonardo, ever curious of the beauty that was most strangely
exquisite, once in an inspired hour painted such a face, a face
wrought of the porcelain of earth with the art of Heaven. But,
whoever should paint it, God certainly made it—must have been
the comment of anyone who caught a glimpse of that little figure
vanishing heavenwards up that stair, like an Ascension of Fra
Angelico’s—that is any one interested in art and angels.
She had not long to wait outside the door she sought, for the
poet, who had listened all day for the sound, had ears for the
whisper of her skirts as she came down the corridor, and before
she had time to knock had already folded her in his arms. The
two babes in that thieves’ wood of commission agents and ship-
brokers stood silent together for a moment, in the deep security of
a kiss such as the richest millionaire could never buy—and then
they fell to comparing notes of their day’s work. The poet had
had one of his rare good days. He had made no money, his post
had been even more disappointing than usual,—but he had written
a poem, the best he had ever written, he said, as he always said of
his last new thing. He had been burning to read it to somebody
all afternoon—had with difficulty refrained from reading it to the
loquacious little keeper’s wife as she brought him some coals—so
it was not to be expected that he should wait a minute before
reading it to her whom indeed it strove to celebrate. With arms
round each other’s necks, they bent over the table littered with
the