Sister Teresa eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 424 pages of information about Sister Teresa.

Sister Teresa eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 424 pages of information about Sister Teresa.

“Life would be too tedious if one were not doing something.  Have another cigarette, Harding.”  And he went to the table and took one out of a silver box.  “Do have one; it comes out of her box, she gave me this box.  You haven’t seen the inscription, have you?” And Harding had to get up and read it; he did this with a lack of enthusiasm and interest which annoyed Owen, but which did not prevent him from going to the escritoire and saying, “And in this pigeon-hole I keep her letters, eight hundred and fifty-three, extending over a period of ten years.  How many letters would that be a year, Harding?”

“My dear Asher, I never could calculate anything.”  “Well, let us see.”  Owen took a pencil and did the sum, irritating Harding, who under his moustache wondered how anybody could be so self-centred, so blind to the picture he presented.  “Eighty-five letters a year, Harding, more than one a week; that is a pretty good average, for when I saw her every day I didn’t write to her.”

“I should have thought you would write sometimes.”

“Yes, sometimes we used to send each other notes.”

“Will he never cease talking of her?” Harding said to himself; and, tempted by curiosity, he got up, lighted another cigarette, and sat down, determined to wait and see.  Owen continued talking for the next half-hour.  “True, he hasn’t had an opportunity of speaking to anybody about her for the last year, and is letting it all off upon me.”

“There is her portrait, Harding; you like it, don’t you?”

Harding breathed again under his moustache.  The portrait brought a new interest into the conversation, for it was a beautiful picture.  A bright face which seemed to have been breathed into a grey background—­a grey so beautiful, Harding had once written, that every ray of sunlight that came into the room awoke a melody and a harmony in it, and held the eye subjugated and enchanted.  Out of a grey and a rose tint a permanent music had been made... and, being much less complete than an old master, it never satisfied.  In this picture there were not one but a hundred pictures.  To hang it in a different place in the room was to recreate it; it never was the same, whereas the complete portraits of the old masters have this fault—­that they never rise above themselves.  But a ray of light set Evelyn’s portrait singing like a skylark—­background, face, hair, dress—­cadenza upon cadenza.  When the blinds were let down, the music became graver, and the strain almost a religious one.  And these changes in the portrait were like Evelyn herself, for she varied a good deal, as Owen had often remarked to Harding; for one reason or for some other—­no matter the reason:  suffice it to say that the picture would be like her when the gold had faded from her hair and no pair of stays would discover her hips.  And now, sitting looking at it, Owen remembered the seeming accident which had inspired him to bring Evelyn to see the great painter whose genius it had been to

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Project Gutenberg
Sister Teresa from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.