And, with a satirical smile, she added:
"Let us accept the part of looking-glasses, but let us place our gods in a still higher light! They will not complain; and we shall at least have the advantage of seeing beyond them a little space and brightness."
The conversation then assumed a more personal character, each of us thinking of the well-beloved: Marcienne, ever mournful and passionate; the gentle Blanche, anxious, secretly plighted to an absent lover; and Cecilia, all absorbed in her young happiness with the husband of her choice.
5
Hermione and her cluster of girls had gradually come nearer. She dresses badly, she does her hair with uncompromising severity, but, in spite of it all, Hermione is very beautiful; and her loveliness triumphs over her commonplace clothes, even as her generous heart and the noble restlessness of her mind keep her on a plane which is loftier than the narrow dogmas of her creed.
During a moment's silence, I hear her answer a question put by Rose:
"Oh, what does it matter if I am wrong, as long as I make others happy!"
And all my friends, like a sheaf of glowing flowers, seemed to be bound together by that word of loving-kindness. Were they not all, these bestowers of joy, living in a world into which neither sin nor error entered, their lives obeying the same eternal principles of love, following the sacred law of nature which fills our hearts with tenderness and our bodies with longing?
6
They were now able to talk together. Their remarks would not be vain, ordinary or frivolous. During the first moments of isolation, each of them had pursued her own thoughts and continued her own life. Each had reached that perfect diapason at which the most antagonistic spirits are in supreme unison. Heedless of different objects or of diverse aims, the same yearning for generosity, the same thirst after graciousness and beauty united their hearts; and their minds, leaping all barriers, came to an understanding of one another in a region beyond opinions. All these young and beautiful creatures, all these forms fashioned for delight exhaled an atmosphere of love. Were they not all alike its votaries?