Mrs. Friend shook her head. The nature and deficiencies of her own education were becoming terribly plain to her with every hour in Helena's company.
Helena sprang up, fetched the book, put Mrs. Friend forcibly into an arm-chair, and read aloud. Mrs. Friend listened with all her ears, and was at the end, like Faust, no wiser than before. What did it all mean? She groped, dazzled, among the Meredithian mists and splendours. But Helena read with a growing excitement, as though the flashing mysterious verse were part of her very being. When the last stanza was done, she flung herself fiercely down on a stool at Mrs. Friend's feet, breathing fast:
"Look now where Colour, the soul's bridegroom, makes The House of Heaven splendid for the Bride."
She turned to look up at the little figure in the chair, half laughing, half passionate: "You do understand, don't you?" Mrs. Friend again shook her head despairingly.
"It sounds wonderful--but I haven't a notion what it means!" Helena laughed again, but without a touch of mockery.
"One has to be taught--coached--regularly coached. Julian coached me."
"What is meant by Colour?" asked Mrs. Friend faintly.
"Colour is Passion, Beauty, Freedom!" said Helena, her cheek glowing. "It is just the opposite of dulness--and routine--and make-believe. It's what makes life worth while. And it is the young who feel it--the young who hear it calling--the young who obey it! And then when they are old, they have it to remember. Now, do you understand?"
Lucy Friend did not answer. But involuntarily, two shining tears stood in her eyes. There was something extraordinarily moving in the girl's ardour. She could hardly bear it. There came back to her momentary visions from her own quiet past--a country lane at evening where a man had put his arm round her and kissed her--her wedding-evening by the sea, when the sun went down, and all the ways were darkened, and the stars came out--and that telegram which put an end to everything, which she had scarcely had time to feel, because her mother was so ill, and wanted her every moment. Had she--even she--in her poor, drab, little life--had her moments of living Poetry, of transforming Colour, like others--without knowing it?