a dark image

'Bertha was entering with a candle in her hand'Bertha, my wife'with cruel eyes, with green jewels and green leaves on the white ball-dress; every hateful thought within her present to me. . . . It was a moment of hell. . . . She came with her candle and stood over me with a bitter smile of contempt; I saw the great emerald brooch on her bosom, a studded serpent with diamond eyes. I shuddered. . . . She was my wife, and we hated each other. Gradually the hearth, the dim library, the candle-light disappeared'seemed to melt away into a background of light, the green serpent with the diamond eyes remaining a dark image on the retina.'

'George Eliot, The Lifted Veil, 1859.