“Beauty,” she whispered, “is time that forgot to be cruel.”

One man asked her, “What is beauty, really?”

Lovers tried to capture her. They bought her hourglasses, pocket watches, sundials. She smiled gently, turned them over, and said, “You can’t keep me. You can only notice me.”

And then she was gone—not vanished, but simply elsewhere . A door closing softly in a house you didn’t know you were standing in.