Regina took the book from her hand, turned over the leaves, and read: 

“’All probationers must be unbetrothed, and their heart still free.’...  ’A short life history of the previous inward and outward experiences of the future Deaconess pupil.  It must be composed and written by herself.’  Olga, what would you do with your past?”

“I have buried it, dear.  All the love of which I was capable I poured out, nay, I crushed the heart that held it; as the Syrian woman broke the precious box of costly ointment, anointing the feet of her God!  When my clay idol fell I could not gather back the wasted trust and affection, and so, all—­all is sepulchred in one deep grave.  I have spent my wealth of spicery; the days of my anointing are for ever ended.  To true deep-hearted women it is given to love once only, and all such scorn to set a second, lesser, lower idol, where formerly they bowed in worship.  Even false gods hold sway long after their images are defiled, their temples overthrown, and as the Dodonian Groves still whisper of the old oracular days, to modern travellers, so a woman’s idolatry leaves her no shrine, no libation, no reverence for new divinities; mutilated though she acknowledges her Hermae, no fresh image can profane their pedestal.  Memory is the high priestess who survives the wreck of altars and of gods, and faithfully ministers amid the gloom of the soul’s catacombs.  I owe much to mamma, and something to Erle Palma, who is a nobler man than I have deemed him, less a bronze Macchiavelli, with a heart of quartz; and I shall never again as heretofore rashly defy their advice and wishes.  But I know myself too well to hope for happiness in the gay frivolous insincere world, where I have fluttered out my butterfly existence of fashionable emptiness.

’I kissed the painted bloom off Pleasure’s lips
And found them pale as Pain’s.’

I have bruised and singed my Psyche wings, and le beau monde has no new, strong pinions to replace those beat out in its hard tyrannous service.  You think me cynical and misanthropic, but, dear, I believe I am only clear-eyed at last.  If I had married him for whom I dared so much, and found too late that all the golden qualities I fondly dreamed that he possessed were only baser metal, gaudy tinsel that tarnished in my grasp, I am afraid it would have maddened me beyond hope of reclamation.  I have made shipwreck; but a yet sadder fate might have overtaken me, and at least my soul has outridden the storm, thanks to your frail babyish hands, so desperately strong when they grappled that awful night with suicidal sin.  Few women have suffered more keenly than I, and yet, in Murial’s sweet patient words,—­

’God has been good to me; you must not think
That I despair. There is a quiet time
Like evening in my soul.  I have no heart.’”

There was more peace in Olga’s countenance as she clasped one of Regina’s hands in hers than her companion had yet seen, and after a moment, she continued: