But the dahlias had no scent; and Bebee wondered if these women had any
heart in them,--they looked all laughter, and glitter, and vanity. To the
child, whose dreams of womanhood were evolved from the face of the Mary
of the Assumption, of the Susannah of Mieris, and of that Angel in the
blue coif whose face has a light as of the sun,--to her who had dreamed
her way into vague perceptions of her own sex's maidenhood and maternity
by help of those great pictures which had been before her sight from
infancy, there was some taint, some artifice, some want, some harshness
in these jewelled women; she could not have reasoned about it, but she
felt it, as she felt that the grand dahlias missed a flower's divinity,
being scentless.
She was a little bit of wild thyme herself; hardy, fragrant, clean,
tender, flowering by the wayside, full of honey, though only nourished
on the turf and the stones, these gaudy, brilliant, ruby-bright,
scarlet-mantled dahlias hurt her with a dim sense of pain and shame.
Fasting, next day at sunrise she confessed to Father Francis:--
"I saw beautiful rich women, and I envied them; and I could not pray to
Mary last night for thinking of them, for I hated them so much.
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