is true that Isaura had come more directly under the influence of
religion than she had been in the earlier dates of this narrative. There
is a time in the lives of most of us, and especially in the lives of
women, when, despondent of all joy in an earthly future, and tortured by
conflicts between inclination and duty, we transfer all the passion and
fervour of our troubled souls to enthusiastic yearnings for the Divine
Love; seeking to rebaptise ourselves in the fountain of its mercy,
taking thence the only hopes that can cheer, the only strength that can
sustain us. Such a time had come to Isaura. Formerly she had escaped
from the griefs of the work-a-day world into the garden-land of Art.
Now, Art had grown unwelcome to her, almost hateful. Gone was the spell
from the garden-land; its flowers were faded, its paths were stony, its
sunshine had vanished in mist and rain. There are two voices of Nature
in the soul of the genuine artist,--that is, of him who, because he can
create, comprehends the necessity of the great Creator. Those voices
are never both silent. When one is hushed, the other becomes distinctly
audible. The one speaks to him of Art, the other of Religion.

At that period several societies for the relief and tendance of the
wounded had been formed by the women of Paris,--the earliest, if I
mistake not, by ladies of the highest rank--amongst whom were the
Comtesse de Vandemar and the Contessa di Rimini--though it necessarily
included others of stations less elevated. To this society, at the
request of Alain de Rochebriant and of Enguerrand, Isaura had eagerly
attached herself. It occupied much of her time; and in connection with
it she was brought much into sympathetic acquaintance with Raoul de
Vandemar--the most zealous and active member of that Society of
St. Francois de Sales, to which belonged other young nobles of the
Legitimist creed. The passion of Raoul's life was the relief of human
suffering. In him was personified the ideal of Christian charity.
I think all, or most of us, have known what it is to pass under the
influence of a nature that is so far akin to ours that it desires
to become something better and higher than it is--that desire being
paramount in ourselves--but seeks to be that something in ways not akin
to, but remote from, the ways in which we seek it. When this contact
happens, either one nature, by the mere force of will, subjugates and
absorbs the other, or both, while preserving