Sometimes it was the face of an old college friend which caught his eye, and he would almost shout for joy to see it smiling and alive, when he had thought it hidden under the daisies. Sometimes it was a rosy matron whom he had last seen as a bashful bride. And these meetings were so frequent that Elsie had got quite used to his starts and exclamations before they had gone half through the rooms.
When he said, "Bless me, it's—no, it isn't—yes, it is—of course it is!" she was gazing intently at one of those pictures which will always have an attraction for women of her temperament. Long afterwards she could have described the painting accurately, and would never forget it as long as she lived.
Two nuns, one old and the other young, were waiting for admittance outside the door of a convent. They had been out into the world to nurse the sick, and had returned (each laden with her basket) in the glory of a summer morning. The elder woman, weary with her labours, waited with half-closed eyes for the door to open. The younger, pale, but full of irrepressible vitality, stood looking at the rich, warm human life which she had renounced for ever. A young wife, with an infant on her arm, had brought her husband his midday meal, and he had flung down his scythe to kiss her under the trees. Those two faces, browned with the sun, flushed with the bloom of the flower, seemed the natural product of the beautiful earth. You could almost hear the myriad sounds of summer; waters trickling through the moss and roots of the wood, the hum of bees, the birds' joyous songs. The very sunlight seemed to dance for gladness among the leaf-shadows as it played over the grey garb of the Sisters. But you knew that in another moment the door would open and close again, shutting out all these common human joys—kisses and smiles and signs of that everyday bliss which makes a paradise of simple lives.
Now Elsie, in her loneliness, had had her dreams of the convent. But a picture of this kind was a better warning than any sermon which a hot-headed Protestant ever preached. There are natures which can put forth blossoms, pale and sweet, in the air of the cloister, and there are others which can flower only in the atmosphere of the world.
The pity is that the women meant for the world too often fly to the cloister, and the women who would have made admirable nuns—
"Devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,"
persist in taking upon themselves those duties of wifehood and maternity for which they were never fitted at all.
Elsie had a rich heart, but its outpourings seemed to be thrown back upon herself, and she had sometimes longed to hide her disappointment in seclusion. But the picture spoke to her, as pictures can do. True art can often succeed where divinity fails; the painter preaches more effectually than the parson.
She gazed at the nuns, quite unconscious that she herself made a picture, and that some one was gazing intently at her. Then, slowly realising that Mr. Lennard had found another acquaintance, she turned, and met the earnest look of a pair of deep-blue eyes.
They were uncommon eyes, singularly blue, singularly true. Their owner was a tall man, much bronzed, and not regularly handsome; but he had that knightliness of look and bearing which always wins notice and attracts liking. Although he wore the prosaic garb of the period, there was something about him that suggested Camelot, and Arthur's court; something that recalled Lancelot, and Galahad, and Percivale; something, in short, which appealed to the romantic side of Elsie's nature. So these two young persons looked at each other, but it did not occur to Mr. Lennard that they might possibly like to get acquainted.