"You're a wonderful child," I said. "When you speak like that, I want to kick myself and burst into song simultaneously. I suppose that's Love."
"I expect so," said Adèle mischievously.
Five minutes later we were standing beneath the shadow of Chartres
Cathedral.
We had come, my wife and I, to see the windows. The day before had been dull, and what light there was had been failing when we had visited the shrine. To-day, however, was all glorious.
If we had risen early, we had our reward.
The place had become a gallery with jewels for pictures. Out of the sombre depths the aged webs of magic glowed with the matchless flush of precious stones. From every side colours we had not dreamed of enriched our eyes. To make the great west rose, the world herself might have been spoiled of her gems. Looking upon this mystery, no man can wonder that the art is lost. Clearly it went the way of Babel. For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Windows the sun was lighting were at once more real and more magnificent. Crimsons and blues, purples and greens, yellows and violets, blazed with that ancient majesty which only lives to-day in the peal of a great organ, the call of a silver trumpet, or the proud roll of drums. Out of the gorgeous pageant mote-ridden rays issued like messengers, to badge the cold grey stone with tender images and set a smile upon the face of stateliness. "Such old, old panes," says someone. "Six hundred years and more. How wonderful!" Pardon me, but I have seen them, and it is not wonderful at all. Beneath their spell, centuries shrink to afternoons. The windows of Chartres are above Time. They are the peepholes of Immortality.
We returned to the hotel in time to contribute to a heated argument upon the subject of tipping.
"It's perfectly simple," said Berry. "You think of what you would hate to have given before the War, double it, add forty per cent. for the increased cost of living, halve it because of the Exchange, ask them whether they'd like it in notes or gold, and pay them in postage-stamps."
"I want to know," said Daphne, "what to give the chambermaid."
"Eight francs fifty. That's the equivalent of half-a-crown before the
War."