She was here and the world, for so long ugly and deformed, was all at once itself again. She was taking a glass of sweet wine from one of the waiters. She was smiling. She was breathing. She was here. She was an island of such colossal importance within a sea of inconsequence that it seemed impossible the Ball was able to continue its empty existence.
The woman above him had tumbled out of his dreams, and now stood like a half-waking ghost, a photograph double exposed, showing him in one moment the fallacy of his past as it bled into his future. The image of Maria Sophia had grown too large for him to bear. He had made it so. In his industry and creativity he had transformed her into something so wonderful that the very fact she might now be anything less terrified him almost as much as the prospect she might exceed it.