1

this afternoon, the whole atmosphere of the house is changed. there is no silence, no work. the maid fusses about, spreading out my dresses before rose and me. we cannot settle upon anything.

"we shall have to try them on you," i say.

but at the very first our choice is made.

a cry of admiration escapes me at the sight of rose sheathed from head to foot in a long green-velvet tunic that falls heavily around her, without ornament or jewellery. from the high velvet collar, her head rises like a flower from its calyx; and i have never beheld a richer harmony than that of her golden hair streaming over the emerald green.

while i finish dressing her, we talk:

"you are having all your friends," she says.

"some of them, those who live in paris at this season. i have done for you to-day what i seldom care to do: i have asked them all together. but i

have made a point of insisting that the strictest isolation shall be maintained."

rose laughed as she asked me what i meant.

"it's quite simple," i answered. "we shall throw open all the doors; and there will be no crowding permitted! no general conversation, no loud talking ..."

"in short," she exclaimed, "the exact opposite to the convent, where we were forbidden to talk in twos."

"that is to say, where you were forbidden to talk at all; for there is no real conversation with more than one. as long as you have not spoken to a person alone, can you say that you have ever seen her?"

she did not appear convinced; and i continued:

"but just think! conversation in pairs, when two people are in sympathy—and they are nearly always in sympathy when they are face to face—can be as sincere as lonely meditations."

i felt that she shared my sentiment; but her reasonable nature makes her always steer a middle course, never leaning to either side.

2

the pale winter sun is beginning to wane, but there is still plenty of daylight in the white drawing-room. and i look at my friends, who have formed little groups in harmony with my wishes and their own. when an increased intimacy brings us all closer together, the party will gain by that earlier informality. each life will have been given its normal pitch and will try at least to keep it. for our souls are such sensitive instruments that they can rarely strike as much as a true third.

blanche, with the agate eyes and the cloud of chestnut hair, is a picture of autumn in the brown and red of her frock, with its bands of sable. she is listening attentively to marcienne. the fair marcienne herself, whom i love for her passionate pride, is sitting near the fire-place; and her wonderful profile stands out against the flames. her mouth is a fierce red; but the figure which shows through the pale-coloured tailor-made dress is full of tender childish curves. the swansdown toque makes her black hair seem blacker still. she is talking seriously and holding out to the flames her fingers covered with rings.

the wide-open door reveals the darker bedroom, in which the lights are already turned on. a young married woman is sitting with her elbows on the table. she is reading a poem in a low voice; and from time to time a few words, spoken more loudly, mingle with the semi-silence of the other rooms. bending under the lamp-shade, her brown hair is bathed in the light, while her profile is veiled by her hand and the lines of her body are lost in the dark dress which melts into the shadow. near her, leaning against the white wall, two white figures listen and dream.

i see rose. she is standing, all emerald and gold, in the middle of the next room. behind her, a mirror reflects the copper candelabra whose lighted branches surround her with stars. a placidly-smiling madonna, chaste and cold, dazzling and glorious, she talks to the inseparables, aurélie and renée.

renée, clad in deep mourning, is a delicious little princess of jet, with lint-white hair and flax-blue irises. her companion, crowned with glowing tresses, knows the splendour of her green eyes and, with a cunning fan-like play of her long eyelids, amuses herself by making them appear and disappear.

my attention is recalled to the visitor by my side,

a young dutchwoman not yet quite at home in france. she is shy in speaking and she does not know my friends. i look at her. her fair round face is quaintly framed in the smooth coils of her golden hair. her eyes are a cloudless blue. her nose, which is a little heavy and serious, belies the smiling mouth, with its corners that turn up so readily. the very long and very lovely neck makes one follow in thought the hollow of the nape and the slope of the shoulders vanishing in a snowy cloud of mechlin lace. on the deliberately antiquated black-silk dress, a gold chain and a miniature set in brilliants give the finishing touch to a style classic in its chastity. seated in a grandfather's chair in the embrasure of the window, she reminds one of mme. de mortsauf in balzac's lys dans la vallée.

but she is also the very embodiment of zealand. you can picture her head covered with a lace cap and her temples adorned with gold corkscrews. behind her you conjure up flat horizons, slow-turning wind-mills, little red-and-green houses in which the inmates seem to play at living. how charming she looks in the last rays of light, at once childish and dignified, passive and romantic ... and so different from the rest!

but has not each her particular interest, her special grace? when my eyes go from one to another, they tell a rosary of precious beads, each with its own peculiar beauty, neither greater nor less than its fellows! what a glad and wondrous thing it is to be women, to be delicate, pretty things, infinitely sensitive and infinitely varied, living works of art, matter for kisses, the realised stuff of dreams! when you look at them like that, solely in the decorative sense, you are ready to condemn those who work, who think and who concentrate upon an aim of some sort, for these superfine creatures carry the reason for their existence within themselves, so great is the perfection which they achieve with a gesture, an attitude, a glance. and then you reflect upon what they too often are in the privacy of their lives: narrow and domineering, attached to petty, useless duties, their minds lacking dignity, their souls lacking horizon; and you are sorry that they have not grown, through the sheer consciousness of their beauty, into ways that are kindly and generous.

i let my hand rest lightly on cecilia's hands; and in the sweetness of the gathering dusk we both dream. like the scent of flowers, the different natures seem to find a more precise expression as their shapes

fade. i explain them to cecilia, who does not know them.

aurélie and renée draw my eyes with their laughter; and i begin with them. they are the careless lovers, idle for the exquisite pleasure of idleness. they live a dream-life, the life of a child that sleeps, dresses itself, goes for a walk, eats sweets and plays with its dolls. they are good-natured as well as frivolous, lissom of mind as well as of body, indulgent to others and charming in themselves. love, resting on their young and tender lives, makes them more tender yet, like the light that lingers long and fondly upon a soft-tinted pastel.

next comes the turn of marcienne, who, greatly daring, has broken with her family and given up worldly luxury, to work and live freely with the man of her choice.

beside her is blanche, still restless and undecided, attracted by love and irritated by her sister hermione, who pursues a vision of charity and redemption.

here my friend's fine profile turns to the other groups; and i continue:

"the one whom we call sister hermione you can see in the dark bedroom, reading under the

light of the lamp, with her face hidden in her hands."

"is she good-looking?"

"very, but tries not to seem so. that is why she is always so simply dressed."

cecilia interrupts me:

"but her dress isn't simple!"

"you are quite right. it is made complex by a thousand superfluous fripperies. hermione has not been slow to understand that, to counteract perfect beauty, you must read simplicity to mean commonplace triviality."

a flutter of silk, a gleam of a silver-white skirt in the waning light, a whiff of orris-root; and marcienne glides down to our feet with a lithe, cat-like movement. in a curt, passionate tone, she says:

"you are speaking of hermione. oh, do try and persuade her sister not to go the same way: is not one enough? must more loveliness be wasted?"

sitting on a cushion on the floor, she raises her glowing face, her eyes dark as night, her scarlet mouth, her dazzling pallor.

"i shall do nothing of the sort," i answer with a laugh, "for i rather like hermione's folly; besides, her reason will soon conquer it! the dangers

we run depend on chance; the first roads we take depend on influences. the way in which we bear those dangers and return from those roads: that is where the interest begins!"

"but, tell me," murmurs cecilia, "what does your hermione want?"

"here is her story, in a couple of words," says marcienne. "she is rich, beautiful and talented; and she belongs to an aristocratic english family. at twenty, she yielded to an impulse and went on the stage; in a few months, she was a really successful actress; then she made the acquaintance of a hindu high-priest. he came and went; and she followed him. during the last two years, she has been his faithful disciple."

"but what does she preach?"

marcienne made a vague gesture:

"buddhist doctrines! she believes that she possesses the true faith and tries to hand it on to others. in the few days which she has spent in paris, she has already made two converts, those two innocents who are hanging on her words. it would all be charming, you know, if her creed did not enjoin chastity and if, by holding those views, she did not risk the awful fate of never knowing love!"

marcienne continued, still addressing herself to my new friend:

"do you see those pretty creatures in white, standing close to hermione? they are two orphans, two girls who fell in love with the same man. i don't know the details of the romance, nor can i say whether it was fancy or passion that guided the man's choice. all i know is that he loved one of them and had a child by her. a little while after, he deserted her. thereupon their unhappy love reunited those two hearts which happy love, as always, had divided. the same devotion and kindness made them both bend over the one cradle. oh, the adorable pity that prompted anne's heart on the day when, hearing her baby call her mamma for the first time, she sent for her sister marie and, holding towards her those little outstretched arms, those eyes in which consciousness was dawning, that little fluttering life seeking a resting-place, she offered the maid, in the exquisite mystery of that first smile, the first name of love! from that time onward, the baby grew up between its two mammas as one treads a sunny path between two flowering banks."

marcienne had a gift for pretty phrases of this kind, which she would let fall not without a certain

affectation. she liked talking and i liked listening to her. i asked her what she thought of rose. she praised her beauty highly and even said the occasional awkwardness of her movements made it more uncommon:

"for that matter," she added, "if it were not so, i should try to be blind to it. a woman must understand that she lowers herself by belittling her sisters. how immensely we increase man's ascendancy by never praising one another!"

i began to laugh:

"alas, i would not dare to say that the wisest among us, in extolling our own sex, are not once more seeking the admiration of some man!"

and marcienne, who has been to such pains to release herself from the worldly surroundings amid which she suffered, goes on speaking long and passionately. there is a note of pain in her voice as she says:

"everything separates us and removes us one from the other, education even more than instinct. if woman only knew how she lessens her power by blindly respecting the petty social laws of which she is nevertheless the sole judge and dictator! whereas she hands them down meekly, from mother to daughter,

with all their wearisome restrictions, and grows indignant if some one bolder ventures to transgress them. and yet it is in this domain, which is hers, that she might extend her power by gradually overthrowing the old idols."

and she also says:

"almost always, in defending a woman, we have occasion to strike a mortal blow at some ancient prejudice. for my part, i must confess that i take a mischievous delight in bestowing special indulgence on things which often are too severe a test for that indulgence in others; for, rather than be suspected of impugning ever so lightly some worn-out principle, they will wound and wound again the most innocent of their sisters."

3

it is almost dark. i leave my companions in order to call for the lamps and i stop near rose as i pass through the next room. here, all the girls are clustered round hermione, who is telling them a story of her travels.

anne and marie are listening respectfully, while the two inseparables, only half-attentive, are sharing a box of sweets.

roseline throws her arms round me and, shrugging her shoulders, says:

"all this strikes me as such utter nonsense!"

she is certainly right, with her normandy common sense; but does she not need just a touch of this same nonsense to bring her faculties into play, her powers into action?

4

when i return to the drawing-room, blanche calls me with a laugh of delight:

"oh, look!" she cries. "i've found a book with a portrait of my beloved elizabeth browning. look at that sweet, gentle face, surrounded with ringlets: it's just as i imagined her. i love her all the better now."

they had opened other books written by women and, leaning over the table, were comparing the frontispiece portraits of the authors, interesting or handsome, grave or smiling, young or old. even so do certain little volumes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries open nearly always with an engraving faded by time and representing charming faces all of the same class and often with similar expressions

and features: a delicate nose, a bow-shaped, smiling mouth, intelligent eyes with no mysterious depths, dimpled cheeks, a string of pearls round the neck, a loosely-tied kerchief just revealing a swelling bosom, wanton curls dancing against a dark background in a frame of roses upheld by cupids. and the quiver and the arrows and the flying ribbons and the turtle-doves: all this, joined to the letters, the maxims or the verses, often grave or even sad, sometimes calm and reasonable, sometimes passionate, brings before us in a few strokes the harmonious picture of woman's life.

"it is no longer the fashion in these days," murmured blanche. "and yet is there not an intimate relation between a woman's work and her appearance?"

"that is the reason, no doubt," replied marcienne, "why it seems, unlike man's, to grow smaller as it passes out of the present. we see the immortal pages disappear like the fallen petals of a flower. it's sad, don't you think?"

struck with the beauty of her closing words, we listened to her in silence. she continued to turn the leaves at random and resumed:

"but, oh, the exquisite art which a woman's work

can show when she is not only beautiful, but truly wise, when a lovely hand indites stately verse, when a life holds or breathes nothing but high romance ... and love! for it is love and love alone that makes a woman's brain conceive."

cecilia, who was gradually losing her shyness, made a gesture to silence us and said, slowly:

"i'll tell you something!"

a general peal of laughter greeted this phrase with which the young dutchwoman, according to the custom of her country, always ushers in her least words. to make yourself better understood by slow and absent minds, is it not well to give a warning? it is a sort of little spring that goes off first and arouses people's attention. then the thought is there, ready for utterance. and sometimes, amid the silence, an announcement is made that it will be fine to-morrow, or that it is hot and that a storm is threatening.

but cecilia is much too clever to cast aside those little mannerisms of her native race which so charmingly accentuate her special type of beauty. so she joined in our laughter with a good grace and, after repeating her warning, observed, in her hesitating language, that, by thus admitting ourselves to be the

mere creatures of love, we were justifying the opinion of the men who treat us as "looking-glasses."

"looking-glasses? men's looking-glasses? and why not?" i exclaimed. "it is not for us women to decry that looking-glass side of us. it is serious, more serious than you think, for on the beauty of our reflection often depend our ardour, our courage, our very character and all the energies that create or affect our actions. besides, whether men or women, we can only reflect one another and we ourselves do not become conscious of our powers until the day of the supreme love, as if, till then, we had only seen ourselves in pocket-mirrors which never reflect more than a morsel of our lives, a movement, a gesture ... and which always distort it!"

every mouth quivered with laughter. i insisted:

"if women often have so much difficulty in learning to know their own characters, it is because most men are scornful mirrors, occupied with nothing smaller than the universe and never dreaming of reflecting women except in a grudging and imperfect fashion."

"it is true," said marcienne, thinking of her lover, a man whose domineering temper often made him unjust to her. "men's lives would be less serenely

confident if our amiable and accommodating souls did not afford them a vision incessantly embellished by love ... and always having infinity for a background!"

and, with a satirical smile, she added:

"let us accept the part of looking-glasses, but let us place our gods in a still higher light! they will not complain; and we shall at least have the advantage of seeing beyond them a little space and brightness."

the conversation then assumed a more personal character, each of us thinking of the well-beloved: marcienne, ever mournful and passionate; the gentle blanche, anxious, secretly plighted to an absent lover; and cecilia, all absorbed in her young happiness with the husband of her choice.

5

hermione and her cluster of girls had gradually come nearer. she dresses badly, she does her hair with uncompromising severity, but, in spite of it all, hermione is very beautiful; and her loveliness triumphs over her commonplace clothes, even as her generous heart and the noble restlessness of her mind

keep her on a plane which is loftier than the narrow dogmas of her creed.

during a moment's silence, i hear her answer a question put by rose:

"oh, what does it matter if i am wrong, as long as i make others happy!"

and all my friends, like a sheaf of glowing flowers, seemed to be bound together by that word of loving-kindness. were they not all, these bestowers of joy, living in a world into which neither sin nor error entered, their lives obeying the same eternal principles of love, following the sacred law of nature which fills our hearts with tenderness and our bodies with longing?

6

they were now able to talk together. their remarks would not be vain, ordinary or frivolous. during the first moments of isolation, each of them had pursued her own thoughts and continued her own life. each had reached that perfect diapason at which the most antagonistic spirits are in supreme unison. heedless of different objects or of diverse aims, the same yearning for generosity, the same

thirst after graciousness and beauty united their hearts; and their minds, leaping all barriers, came to an understanding of one another in a region beyond opinions. all these young and beautiful creatures, all these forms fashioned for delight exhaled an atmosphere of love. were they not all alike its votaries?

one alone, in a fiercer glow of enthusiasm and with a doubtless finer sensualism, one alone attempts to offer up her life to a god! the glorious folly of her! how i love to see her, vainly tormenting her beauty, seeking infinity, aspiring to bear peace across the world. i see her soul like a walled garden in which all the flowers lift themselves higher and higher, struggling to offer themselves to a moment of light. but, in a day of greater discontent and in an hour of maturity, the illusory fence will fall and the fair life will stand in open space. then, drunk with boundless earth and boundless sky, the woman, restored to nature, will doubtless find herself more attuned to pleasure than were the others and more responsive to joy.

i looked at all those bowed heads, dark or fair, dusky or golden, those lovely forms revealed by their clinging robes, those delicate profiles bent over the

portraits and writings of their sisters, far-off friends, vanished, unknown or absent, whose power of love still lives for all men and for all time ... immortal tears, petals dropped from the flower.

then my glistening eyes turned towards my roseline. she was there, indifferent, unmoved, perhaps secretly bored.

and my thoughts wept in my heart.

the most beautiful things cannot be given.