"Have we eaten? I forget! But qu'importe, in the midst of this—and this—and this!"
Once they even missed the train that should at least have returned them to Genazzano in time for tea, because Aunt Clo leaped out of the tram just before the station was reached, at the sudden realization that Lily had never been inside the Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli.
Impervious alike to hunger, thirst, and fatigue, she remained on her feet for nearly an hour in the dim, cool church, pointing out in an impassioned undertone the reasons why certain frescoes were to be admired, and shuddering away from others to which the chief drawback appeared to be that all tourists always looked at them first.
Aunt Clo's knowledge of Art in all its branches seemed to be almost illimitable, and she gave Lily a copy of a thin book of her own, that bore upon the title-page: "Beauty: a Finger-post. By Clotilde Stellenthorpe. Privately printed."
The Finger-post pointed to the great necessity for surrounding oneself with Spaces, and Silences, and occasional Splashes—of light or colour, or sound—and also indicated deleterious features in many hitherto accepted standards. It rather inclined to leave the reader with the impression that Beauty, as a whole, had received a thorough revision at the hands of the author of the book, and would henceforth be found to be within the range of the book's appreciators. There was an underlying suggestion that those outside this circle had not yet reached the stage of development at which Beauty could be of any advantage to them.
Nowadays, Aunt Clo no longer wrote about Beauty. She told Lily that she tried to live it, instead. Everything in the tiny house at Genazzano had been chosen for the sake of either form or colour, and the little bronze mirror that hung, sloping, over Miss Stellenthorpe's writing-table possessed a further qualification.
"I like to go through life le sourire aux lèvres," said Aunt Clo, markedly accentuating the habitual pleasantness of her expression as she spoke. "It is pleasing, refreshing—to look up and meet a smile. What will you, if it happens to be one's own?"
Aunt Clo laughed outright at her own quaint fancy. "When I raise my head from my writing, I see reflected in my little mirror a pair of steady eyes, a face that holds the lines graven by many experiences, some grave, some gay, and a smile—I hope a strong, steadfast, humorous smile. Time was, my Lily, when the face that I saw in the mirror was that of a tragic muse. Thank God, the phase has passed!"
Aunt Clo not infrequently threw out similar sombre indications that her past had held some deep, unspecified cause for woe.
She was very kind to Lily, although frequently deploring in her the traces of her upbringing.