WHITEWASH
awoke. How could it be described ? What words could ever bring the look of it before other eyes? What color, what inspiration of the brush, could reproduce one atom of it? Unconscious of her actions, she quenched the flame of her taper, stepped from the ranks of the procession, and, absorbed into the onlooking multitude, watched with the interest of her whole complex sensitive ness, the multitude that streamed by in the glow of the tapers.
Wonderful! Compelling! the expressions on those peasant faces, thrown into sharp relief by the lights that burned beneath and around them. The intense realism of a Holbein, the shadowed depths of Rembrandt, the unearthly, grotesque force of Dürer, and more, more, even the rapt, enthralled enthusiasm of Fra Angelico, would be necessary to render their power. And yet, it was not to be done! Oh, the centuries bridged by those faces under the mediæval head-dresses! This was no nineteenth century. That ecstatic woman's head, in its halo of illuminated linen convolutions, must be fresh risen from some carven tomb, where its marble counterpart lies staring blankly at the
