I looked and saw a face unseen before that had haunted me all my life though till this day unknown.
He drew the curtain back long before I had had my fill of gazing at it.
“Silence is better than applause,” he said, and put his hand upon my arm and moved away.
“Who is it?” I asked at last.
“That is Purity, Vestasian’s wife, the Virgin Mother of the God in Man.”
“She is more beautiful than all in heaven.”
He stopped and looked at me and shook his head and smiled.
“Not more beautiful, a little different, that is all. A little tenderer, a little weaker, a little quieter, at times a little gayer, at others a little more afraid of pain, and that is all.”
I stayed with him all the morning, and in the afternoon went to see Philemon.
He dwelt on the other side of the river, and lived there very happily, and Sunbeam and Moonbeam, who often used to go to have tea with him, always came back with wonderful accounts of what they had seen and heard and done. This afternoon I found him busy preparing medicines and consulting every now and then a large book, which he had compiled himself from his own investigations. But for all that he was willing enough that I should join him, though he still continued his work at odd intervals. I sat in the large open window and looked down on the river. It was very bright and full of life down there. Pleasure barges and swift canoes glided up and down the water, others walked upon its shining ripples, and every now and then a form would rise from it and shake the dashing spray far off in every direction.