And from thenceforth the ivories, the enamels, the ornaments passed from the hands of the lady to those of her lover, to whom they communicated an ineffable thrill of delight.

He felt that thus some particle of the charm of the beloved woman entered into these objects, just as a portion of the virtue of the magnet enters into the iron.

It was, in truth, the magnetic sense of love--one of those acute and profound sensations which are rarely felt but at love's beginning, and which, differing essentially from all others, seem to have no physical or moral seat, but to exist in some neutral element of our being--an element that is intermediate, and the nature of which is unknown.
'Here again is a rapture I have never felt before,' thought Andrea.
A kind of torpor seemed creeping over him.

Little by little, he was losing consciousness of time and place.
'I recommend this clock to your notice,' Elena was saying to him, with a look the full significance of which he did not for the first moment understand.
It was a small Death's-head, carved in ivory with extraordinary power and anatomical skill.

Each jaw was furnished with a row of diamonds, and two rubies flashed from the deep eye-sockets.