“It is said that after the Flood Noe came here to live, held in high honor, as we may well imagine, by his descendants. As time passed, after his death, the truth became mixed with error, and the patriarch Noe became the god Janus, with two faces, because he had seen the old world and the new. So all antique truth, left to human care, became corrupted little by little. It was only when the Holy Spirit came down to stay on earth that truth could be preserved unadulterated. ‘Teaching you all truth.’ Am I preaching? Excuse me!”
Turning her face, as she spoke slowly and dreamily, she had found Mr. Vane looking at her with a steady and grave regard which did not evade, but lingered an instant, when it met hers. She recollected that he had not her faith, and thought he might be displeased a little at having alien doctrines so constantly held up before him.
On the contrary, he was admiring her fair, pale face, which the glowing west and a glowing thought were tinting with soft rose, and was
thinking he had never known a woman who so habitually lived in a high atmosphere, who so easily gathered about her the beauties of the past and the present, and who had so little gossip to talk. When she descended to trifling things, it was to invest them with a charm that made them worthy of notice as pretty and interesting trifles, but never to elevate them to places they were not made for. Besides, he liked her way of talking—a certain cool sweetness of manner, like the sweetness of a rose, that touched those who came near, but was not awakened by their presence, and would be as sweet were no one by to know. He glanced at her again when she was again looking off thoughtfully into the west, and marked the light touch with gold the strands of a braid that crowned her head under the violet wreath. She was certainly a very lovely woman, he thought. Why had she never married?
For, though we call her Signora, the Vanes’ padrona was, in fact, a signorina.
“Well, what is it?” she asked smilingly, turning again, aware of his eyes. She was one of those persons who always feel the stress of another mind brought to bear on them. “You should tell me what it is.”
The two girls had gone to a little distance, and he ventured to put the question.
“It is an impertinence,” he said hastily, “but I was wondering why you never married. You are thirty-five years old, and have had time and opportunities. If you command me to ask no more, I shall not blame you.”
“It is not an impertinence,” she replied quite easily. “There is no tragedy hidden behind my ‘maiden
meditation.’ The simple truth is that I have never had an offer from any one whom I could willingly or possibly promise to love, honor, and obey for my whole life, though I have refused some with regret; and if I have known any person to whom I could have so devoted myself, no approach on his part and no consciousness on mine have ever revealed the fact to me. My mind and life were always full. My mother taught me to love books and nature, and said nothing about marriage. There is nothing like having plenty to think of. Are you satisfied?”