Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/76

66 I even grew to shudder at it. I was really learning more than French verbs and how to phrase notes of condolence with elegance. I was learning to look at life from the upper side, instead of from the under. And then I got in the habit of talking things over with Sister Angelica. She was the only woman I ever knew who'd never blow the toot, as Bud's friends would phrase it. She helped me a lot. But she could never make my world over for me. She tried hard. But that sort of thing isn't done in real life.

I stood the Ursuline academy for nineteen long months. And then I made my escape.

Why it was I don't know; but I had to get away. There was peace all around me, but there wasn't peace in my heart. Perhaps it was the hardness and the baldness of the place that proved too much for me—for deep down in my soul there was that absurd but that eternal hunger for splendor. I was blessed or cursed with a love for color, for richness. Something within me always responded to the polished surfaces of old wood, to the harmonizing tones of tapestry, to the high lights you see in silver and cut-glass. If I'd been a pawn-broker's daughter it would have been easier to explain. And I knew I could never have these things. But I had that