The Dark Lady by Louis Auchincloss, Thomas Auchincloss

not cross Rubicons and burn bridges. Let us be rational."
    But for answer she simply resumed the playing of her hymn, and after a few moments of consternation he could only leave the room.

8
    When Clara was fifteen she had a religious experience before the western portal of Amiens Cathedral. Her father, an amateur student of Gothic art who had even written a private monograph on apsidal chapels, was in the habit of taking his large family with him on French ecclesiastical tours, and Clara at an early age had learned the names of all the saints who appeared in the niches and the symbols of their martyrdom and could even identify those apostles supposed to be grandsons of Saint Anne. But on that sunny afternoon before Amiens, waiting outside in the square while her indefatigable father paid a second visit to the crypt, it occurred to her that she had gone through Europe seeing more of guidebooks than of churches, and, looking up, she took in the cathedral for the first time.
    What she noted was something that she was later to recognize in Monet's studies of Rouen. The towering façade was high, cluttered, complicated, formidable, a looming, terrifying mass, like a mammoth breaker about to crash at sea. But then, even as she caught her breath in near terror, she saw that it was not about to crash. On the contrary, it might stand forever. Why was the edifice so much greater than its individual parts? Why did it speak to her now? Was it possible that the faith of the toiling, believing multitudes who had constructed it, stone by stone, had actually entered into the walls, the soaring tower, the sweeping voussoirs, the pointed arches? Or was it simply that God was there?
    Religion for her now began to have color and vividness. She loved to read about the martyrdom of the saints whose images covered the dark walls and portals of the cathedrals or were emblazoned on glass or tapestry within. It seemed to Clara that it might be a very glorious thing to die in torment, one's eyes fixed on the heavens, confident of salvation and bliss. Was it not possible that with adequate faith there would be no torment? It was said of some of the early martyrs that they seemed to feel no pain, and Saint John and the Virgin were believed to have ascended directly to Paradise without the mortal experience of death. Clara did not feel that it was necessary for her to become a Roman Catholic. The great sky-thrusting cathedrals seemed to transcend the small arbitrary creeds of the little men who had built them. She felt herself a part of a vast spiritual cosmos of which the planet earth was only one tiny natural aspect.
    By eighteen she had succeeded, at least in her own estimate, in reconciling her spirituality with the demands of a Clarkson world. She continued to derive comfort from her elevated thoughts and feelings, but she was able to care for her family and friends and to enjoy her reading and music. She had grown into a tall, fine-looking woman who dressed with a flair for simplicity. What more did people want? But people were unreasonable. "Clara is remote," they said. "Clara is never quite with us." "What is Clara dreaming about?" Never mind, her parents' bland faces seemed to reply. A man will come along, a fine man, the right man, who will be attracted to Clara's noble looks and character. And then you'll see her change fast enough!
    But Clara thought something else might happen, although she did not know what. A clarion message from the sky? A command to go to the Antipodes and wash the feet of savages? To be boiled in oil? To prepare herself for every eventuality she practiced a rigid humility. She accepted only such invitations as her mother regarded as mandatory. She studied Latin and Greek and church history. She taught literature to a class of aspiring stenographers; she played the piano for Sunday services in a settlement house. People began to say that she would never marry, that she was too devoted to good works, "a saint, you