What he saw was a tangle of gravel walks, gray as the desert, drawing away from grassy places and coming up sharply against the house. Such a house! A church—a tomb—a fluttering-curtained living-hall—all stretched out in one long chain of battlemented stone. Where the church began and the living-hall ended no one could say, for there were trees everywhere.
"The lower part of the abbey is in good condition, it seems," my conductor remarked, as we approached.
"Good condition!" I echoed. "Why, those doorways are as realistic as—Sunday morning! I feel that I ought to have on a silk dress—and hold the corners of my prayer-book with a handkerchief—to keep from soiling my white gloves."
"If you listen perhaps you can hear the choir-boys," he said, after a pause, and without smiling.
"But there might be a sermon, too!" I objected.
High above the doors was a great open space of a missing window; then, over this, smaller spaces for smaller windows; and—in a niched pinnacle—the Virgin.
"How can she—a woman in love—endure all this beauty?" I asked, my voice hushed with awe.
"She's endured it for many centuries, it seems," he answered.
"Why, she hasn't even seen it—not once!" I cried, for I saw then that she was not looking up, but down—at the burden in her arms.