"I cannot give him the aspect of an ascetic; his eyes, his smile are too sweet; the desert sun had bronzed him, his features must have been harsher."
"Paint him as God inspires you. This evening, during vespers, I looked at your Holy Virgin the whole time."
"You think it good."
"It is perfect. Her sad eyes, her inspired face seem to say that she knows her divine Son will suffer for humanity."
"Well, but Sister Seraphine is not pleased with it."
"What does she say?" asked Helene with a smile.
"That it is hardly befitting to have beautiful pictures in convents, that the eyes of nuns ought not to dwell on the works of sinners."
"God bless her! She grumbles, but she is good at bottom. When I was ill, before you came, she hardly ever left me. Here we are at my door."
Helene and the novice Olia rapidly ascended the steps of the staircase, shaking the water from their cloaks. When they reached her well-warmed room, Helene took off her short black pelisse and the cap which concealed her hair. Her dwelling had two stages; Olia, her guest, lodged and worked on the ground floor; Helene occupied the upper one. The furniture was very simple—a table of white wood, a small very hard sofa covered with brown holland, two old arm-chairs and straw-bottomed chairs ranged along the wall. Above the sofa hung the portrait of some unknown nun with dark eyes shadowed by a black veil and pale wrinkled lips. In one corner, a lamp burned before an icon in a gold frame.
Helene was not yet thirty years old; her face, pale and thin, had already assumed the monastic expression, but her refined features were still beautiful; her large proud eyes recalled by their sadness and their passionate expression Carlo Dolce's martyrs. One could guess that in this soul which had already long suffered, the sacrifice was not yet consummated, and the struggle still continued. In those dark eyes there often came also the poignant look of physical suffering; her face showed signs of sleepless nights, suppressed tears and sobs choked down.