found strength to conquer his infatuation, self-sacrifice, to give up freely that which was freely his own.
It was not so, however. The very innocence that guarded the girl, while it lured him irresistibly to destruction, was the most insurmountable barrier in his path; and so he hovered on, hoping that which he dared not realise—wishing for all he felt he would yet be unwilling to accept; striving for a prize unspeakably precious, though, perhaps I should say, because impossible of attainment, and which, even if he could win it, he might not wear it so much as an hour. No wonder his heart beat and his breath came quick, while he passed with stealthy gait into the convent garden, a pitfall for the feet that walked in innocence—a black sheep in a stainless flock—a leper where all the rest were clean.
But Cerise, radiant in her white dress, crossed the sunny lawn and came down the accustomed path with more than their usual light shining in her blue eyes, with a fresher colour than common on her soft young cheeks. To him she had never looked so beautiful, so womanly, so attractive. The struggle had been very fierce during his solitary walk; the defeat was flagrant in proportion. He ought to have known a bitter disappointment must be in store to balance the moment of rapture in which he became conscious of her approach. Some emanation seemed to glorify the air all around her, and to warn him of her presence long before she came. To the lady-superior of the convent, to her elders and instructors, Mademoiselle de Montmirail was nothing more than a well-grown damsel, with good eyes and hair, neither more nor less frivolous and troublesome than her fellows, with much room for improvement in the matters of education, music, manners, and deportment; but to the young Jesuit she was simply—an angel.
Cerise held both hands out to her director, with a greeting so frank and cordial that it should have undeceived him on the spot. The lady-superior, from her shaded windows, might or might not be a witness to their interview, and there is no retreat perhaps of so much seclusion, yet so little privacy, as a convent garden; but Cerise did not care though nuns and lay-sisters and all overlooked her every gesture and overheard every word she spoke.
