and body; their pearl-gray tints were brilliant without vivacity, candid without passion.  The line of the nose might have seemed cold, like a steel blade, without two rosy nostrils, the movements of which were out of keeping with the chastity of that dreamy brow, often perplexed, sometimes smiling, but always of an august serenity.  An alert little ear attracted the eye, peeping beneath the coif and between two curls, and showing a ruby ear-drop, the color of which stood vigorously out on the milky whiteness of the neck.  This was neither Norman beauty, where flesh abounds, nor French beauty, as fugitive as its own expressions, nor the beauty of the North, cold and melancholy as the North itself—­it was the deep seraphic beauty of the Catholic Church, supple and rigid, severe but tender.

“Where could one find a prettier duchess?” thought Beauvouloir, contemplating his daughter with delight.  As she stood there slightly bending, her neck stretched out to watch the flight of a bird past the windows, he could only compare her to a gazelle pausing to listen for the ripple of the water where she seeks to drink.

“Come and sit here,” said Beauvouloir, tapping his knee and making a sign to Gabrielle, which told her he had something to whisper to her.

Gabrielle understood him, and came.  She placed herself on his knee with the lightness of a gazelle, and slipped her arm about his neck, ruffling his collar.

“Tell me,” he said, “what were you thinking of when you gathered those flowers?  You have never before arranged them so charmingly.”

“I was thinking of many things,” she answered.  “Looking at the flowers made for us, I wondered whom we were made for; who are they who look at us?  You are wise, and I can tell you what I think; you know so much you can explain all.  I feel a sort of force within me that wants to exercise itself; I struggle against something.  When the sky is gray I am half content; I am sad, but I am calm.  When the day is fine, and the flowers smell sweet, and I sit on my bench down there among the jasmine and honeysuckles, something rises in me, like waves which beat against my stillness.  Ideas come into my mind which shake me, and fly away like those birds before the windows; I cannot hold them.  Well, when I have made a bouquet in which the colors blend like tapestry, and the red contrasts with white, and the greens and the browns cross each other, when all seems so abundant, the breeze so playful, the flowers so many that their fragrance mingles and their buds interlace, —­well, then I am happy, for I see what is passing in me.  At church when the organ plays and the clergy respond, there are two distinct songs speaking to each other,—­the human voice and the music.  Well, then, too, I am happy; that harmony echoes in my breast.  I pray with a pleasure which stirs my blood.”