And what a dashing crystal image it was that rose in Charlotte’s heart then—Sir Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington and King of the Fairies, with long black wings and a crown of lightning, astride, not a white horse this time but a white rhinoceros, his sword a blue, lamplit flame! The beauty of the dream expanded like a silk balloon in her chest, almost painful in its familiar sweetness, the pricks of a tale, and as ever, she felt as though she could never be big enough for even one of the stories that stormed inside her. It would drown her entirely and or burn her up from within and leave
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