Beautiful things: things fantastic, ignorant, absurd, very simple, very
unreasonable oftentimes, but things beautiful always, and sometimes even
very wise by a wisdom not of the world; by a certain light divine that
does shine now and then as through an alabaster lamp, through minds that
have no grossness to obscure them.
Her words were not equal to the burden of her thoughts at times, but he
knew how to take the pearl of the thought from the broken shell and
tangled sea-weed of her simple, untutored speech.
"If there be a God anywhere," he thought to himself, "this little Fleming
is very near him."
She was so near that, although he had no belief in any God, he could not
deal with her as he had used to do with the work-girls in the primrose
paths of old Vincennes.
CHAPTER XVI.
"To be Gretchen, you must count the leaves of your daisies," he said to
her, as he painted,--painted her just as she was, with her two little
white feet in the wooden shoes, and the thick green leaves behind; the
simplest picture possible, the dress of gray--only cool dark gray--with
white linen bodice, and no color anywhere except in the green of the
foliage; but where he meant the wonder and the charm of it to lie was in
the upraised, serious, child-like face, and the gaze of the grave,
smiling eyes.
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