How many times during those terrible months he had striven to produce a perfect calm in his own soul by calling up stoical thoughts, and all in vain; or, if not in vain, the only effect had been a temporary and enforced calm.
Nor was it unworthy a manly and reasonable character that such an effect as he now experienced should be produced by something which, apparently, appealed only to the artistic or the marvellous. Every soul has its beautiful gate; and if truth, walking about outside, should choose to enter by that vine-wreathed portal, and reach the citadel by way of gardens and labyrinths, instead of approaching by the broad avenue of reason, who shall say that it is not as well? Besides, in the artist, that gate stands always open.
It was those same sunbeams, shining on the hill-top, and speaking to the lonely prisoner of a dawn of hope and joy, which to Annette Gerald's eyes had flashed like the two-edged sword by whose lightnings the first sinners in the world had fled out into the desert. But this sorrowful daughter of Eve missed one of the consolations of our first mother; for Eve could lament aloud, and call on all creation to weep with her; but this later exile must take up her misery as if it were a delight.
She went about smilingly, making preparations for this little journey she had announced her intention of taking.
“But you needn't put everything in order, just as if you were never coming back again,” her mother said. “I'll see to things.”
She was sitting in Annette's chamber, and watching her at work.
“Well, mamma, just as you please,” the daughter answered gently, and touched her mother caressingly on the shoulder in passing.
A lock of Mrs. Ferrier's dark hair had fallen from the comb, and was hanging down her back. Annette paused to fasten it up, and, as she did so, caught quickly a pair of scissors near, and severed a little tress.
“What in the world are you cutting my hair for?” exclaimed Mrs. Ferrier, who had witnessed the operation in a looking-glass opposite.
Annette laughed and blushed. She had not meant to be detected. “I'll tell you when I come back, mamma. You shall see what I am going to have made. It will be something very wonderful.”