The Worshipper of the Image by Richard Le Gallienne (1899)

This is a fable about the tyranny of beauty. Antony is married to Beatrice and they have a little girl child, strangely named Wonder. Antony is a sensitive artist type, trying to write. On a day in London, at Covent Garden, he finds in a shopstall a fascinating death-mask which shocks him with its resemblance to Beatrice. The shopkeeper tells him that it's the mask of a young woman who threw herself into the Seine. Bringing it home to the country, to Beatrice and Wonder, he finds himself utterly entranced by its beauty, and installs it in a little chalet in a wood next to their cottage which he uses as a writing retreat, hoping to find a muse for his work. Beatrice is disturbed by it and won't have it in the cottage. Antony is gripped. His imagination fired on all fronts, he begins what can only be descibed as a relationship with the Image; he senses that it is communicating with him and sees moods pass across and through it. It says that it is Silencieux, a kind of eternal spirit of beauty and inveigling fascination, which has commandeered and controlled men all through the ages, many of whom have died for it, and conversely benefited from its power of inspiration. In his rejection of all else around him and total concentration on Silencieux, Antony is the next of these. His work does improve, but his formerly loving connection to Beatrice and Wonder is gone. He has Wonder unwillingly kiss Silencieux to appreciate her beauty; she sickens and dies. This shocks and shames Antony out of his dream state, and he and Beatrice for a short period get away from their cottage, recover some balance in their grief, and find peace. Antony is astonished by who he has become, and is aware of Silencieux's sinister import. When they return to their cottage near the wood, he is determined to smash the Image. But he finds he can't, and decides to bury her instead. Here begins the final chapter. Her power is too strong. He digs her up and reinstals her in her former position in the chalet. Beatrice realises, heartbroken, that all is lost, that she no longer has any purpose in the world, hears the spirit of Wonder calling to her in the night near a black pond in the wood, and casts herself in. Antony, completely owned by Silencieux, is only slightly saddened by her death, and ponders quietly to himself how beautiful she looks with pieces of lily in her wet hair. He returns to the chalet, and in a short volcanic last paragraph, sees that the Image has changed - its mouth is open, and a death's-head moth sits inside! This is the most affecting Gallienne I've read thus far - he was a really good ideas-man. My former concerns about him still ring true - there is ultimately a bloodless quality to his work. Fascinating to consider what Wilde or Beerbohm would have made of this notion - the result could well have been a lasting classic. But in Gallienne's hands it is still remarkable.