“If I could found a monastic order,” Hilda said, “one of the rules should be a week's compulsory retirement into the world four times a year.” She spoke with a kind of grave brightness; it was difficult to know whether she was altogether in jest.
“There would be secession all over the place,” Arnold responded, with his repressed smile. “You would get any number of probationers; I wonder whether you would keep them!”
“During that week,” Hilda went on, “they should be compelled to dine and dance every night, to read a 'Problem' novel every morning before luncheon, to marry and be given in marriage, and to go to all the variety entertainments. Think of the austere bliss of the return to the cloisters! All joy lies in a succession of sensations, they say. Do you remember how Lord Ormont arranged his pleasures? Oh yes, my brotherhood would be popular, as soon as it was understood.”
Alicia hurried in with something palliating—she could remember flippancies of her own that had been rebuked—but there was no sign or token of disapproval in Arnold's face. What she might have observed there, if she had been keen enough in vision, was a slight disarrangement, so to speak, of the placid priestly mask, and something like the original undergraduate looking out from beneath.
Hilda began to put on her gloves. The left one gaped at two finger-ends; she buttoned it with the palm thrown up and outward, as if it were the daintiest spoil of the Avenue de l'Opera.
“Not yet!” Alicia cried.
“Thanks, I must. To-night is our last full rehearsal, and I have to dress the stage for the first act before six o'clock. And, after pulling all that furniture about, I shall want an hour or two in bed.”
“You! But it's monstrous. Is there nobody else?”
“I wouldn't let anybody else,” Hilda laughed. “Don't forget, please, that we are only strolling players, odds and ends of people, mostly from the Antipodes. Don't confound our manners and customs with anything you've heard about the Lyceum. Good-bye. It has been charming. Goodbye, Mr. Arnold.”
But Alicia held her hand. “The papers say it is to be The Offence of Galilee, after all,” she said.