"But one can keep them clean."
Eileen burst into a peal of laughter.
"Qu'avez-vous donc?" said the good creature in vexation.
"I thought of a clock washing its face with its hands."
"You are a naughty child—one cannot talk seriously to you."
"Oh, dear mother, I am just as serious when I am laughing as when I am crying."
"My child, we must never cultivate the mocking spirit. Leave me. I am vexed with you."
As her first communion approached, however, all these simmerings of scepticism and revolt died down into the recommended recueillement. Her days of retreat, passed in holy exercises, were an ecstasy of absorption into the divine, and the pious readings began to assume a truer complexion as the experiences of sister-souls, deep crying unto deep. Oh, how she yearned to take the vows, to leave the trivial distracting life of the outer world for the peace of self-sacrificial love!
As she sat in the chapel, all white muslin and white veil, her hair braided under a little cap, the new rosary of amethyst—a gift from home—at her side, her hands clasped, exalted by incense and flowers and the sweet voices of the choir, chanting Gounod's Canticle, "Le Ciel a visité la terre," she felt that never more would she let this celestial visitant go. When after the communion she pulled the last piece of veiling over her face, she felt that it was for ever between her and the crude world of sense; the "Hymn of Thanksgiving" was the apt expression of her emotions.
But next time she came under these aesthetic, devotional influences—even as her own voice was soaring heavenward in the choir—she thought to herself, "How delicious to have an emotion which you feel will last for ever and which you know won't!" And a gleam of amusement flitted over her rapt features.