Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/150

142 own ideal as utterly as any lad of twenty. In the pause between her religious services, in the hush of the spring-tide» while she walked with him in the still convent gardens, and at the supper she shared with him in her pretty little cell, with its maple wood, its sunny pictures, and its fresh primroses, that had nothing of the recluse, as the meal had nothing of the ascetic in its frothing chocolate, golden honey, milk-white cakes, dainty river fish, and newly laid eggs, the Abbess spoke incessantly and garrulously of but one theme. She did penance for the indulgence every ten minutes, it is true, by a gentle little pleading sermon against the desire of the eye, the perishableness of earthly beauty, and the danger of erring idolatry; but the penance done, she perpetually nullified it by dwelling, in all her innocent unwisdom, on every grace, on every word, on every charm of the woman against whom, nevertheless, she tenderly warned him. Every syllable she uttered heightened a hundred-fold the sorcery which his lost saviour's memory had for him, and all her simple warnings drifted past his thoughts unheard. A child's hand will sooner stop the seas, when they rise in their wrath, than counsels of caution or of prudence arrest the growth of a great passion.

"Idalia!"