height, breadth, depth of him so acutely as now she did. The former
ignorance in such a case had been bliss indeed, for whereunto her present
acquired wisdom might point even she dared not consider. Any other girl
must have remained sufficiently alive to the enormous disparity every way
between herself and the artist; and Joan grasped the difference, but from
the wrong point of view. The man's delicacy of discernment, his wisdom, his
love of the things which she loved, his fine feeling, his humility--all
combined in Joan's judgment to place him far above herself, though she had
not words to name the qualities; but whereas another lowly woman, reaching
this point, must, if she possessed any mother-wit or knowledge of the
world, have awakened to the danger and grown guarded, Joan, claiming little
wit to speak of, and being an empty vessel so far as knowledge of the world
was concerned, saw no danger and allowed her thoughts to run away with her
in a wholly insane direction. This she did for two reasons: because she
felt absolutely safe, and because she suspected that Nature, who was
"Mister Jan's" God, had now come to be her God also. The man was very wise,
and he hated everything which lacked truth: therefore he would always do
what was right, and he would not be less true to her than he was to the
world. Truth was his guiding star, and he had always found Nature true.
Therefore, why should not Joan find it true? Nature was talking to her now
and teaching her rapidly. She must be content to wait and learn. The two
men, Noy and Barren, fairly represented the opposite views of life each
entertained, and Joan felt the new music wake a thousand sleeping echoes in
her heart while the old grew more harsh and unlovely as she considered it.
Joe had so many opinions and so little information; "Mister Jan" knew
everything and asserted nothing save what Nature had taught him. Joe was so
self-righteous and overbearing, so like her father, so convinced that Luke
Gospeldom was the only gate to glory; "Mister Jan" had said there was more
of the Everlasting God in a bluebell than in the whole of the Old
Testament; he had declared that the smell of the gorse and the sunshine on