PRELUDE
    Who that
        cares much
              to know the history
                   of man,
           and how the mysterious mixture
            behaves under the varying experiments
                   of Time,
         has not dwelt,
           at least briefly,
         on the life
               of Saint Theresa,
           has not
              smiled with some gentleness
                   at the thought
                       of the little girl
                  walking forth one morning hand-in-hand
                       with her
                      still smaller brother,
         to go
              and seek martyrdom
                   in the country
                       of the Moors?

    Out they
        toddled from rugged Avila,
           wide-eyed and helpless-looking
               as two fawns,
         but with human hearts,
           already beating
               to a national idea;
        until domestic reality
              met them
                   in the shape of uncles,
           and turned them back
               from their great resolve.

    That child-pilgrimage
        was a fit beginning.

    Theresa's passionate,
           ideal nature
              demanded an epic life:
        what were many-volumed romances
               of chivalry
             and the social conquests
                of a brilliant
                    girl to her?

    Her flame quickly burned up
         that light fuel;
        and,
           fed from within,
         soared after
               some illimitable satisfaction,
           some object
              which would never justify weariness,
         which would reconcile self-despair
               with the rapturous
                 consciousness
                    of life beyond self.

    She found her epos
           in the reform
               of a religious order.

    That Spanish woman
         who lived
               three hundred years ago,
           was certainly
               not the last
                   of her kind.

    Many Theresas have been born
         who found
               for themselves no epic life
         wherein there was a constant
              unfolding of far-resonant action;
        perhaps only a life
               of mistakes,
           the offspring
            of a certain spiritual grandeur
                         ill-matched
             with the meanness of opportunity;
        perhaps a tragic failure
              which found no sacred poet
                and sank unwept into oblivion.

    With dim lights and
          tangled circumstance
         they tried
              to shape their thought
                   and deed
                 in noble agreement;
        but after all,
           to common eyes their struggles
            seemed mere inconsistency
                   and formlessness;
        for these later-born Theresas
            were helped
                   by no coherent social faith
                       and order
              which could perform the function
                   of knowledge
                 for the ardently willing soul.

    Their ardor
          alternated between a vague ideal
               and the common
              yearning of womanhood;
        so that the one was
             disapproved as extravagance,
           and the other
              condemned as a lapse.

    Some have felt
         that these blundering lives
            are due
                   to the inconvenient indefiniteness
         with which the Supreme Power
            has fashioned the natures
                   of women:
        if there were
               one level
             of feminine incompetence
               as strict
             as the ability
              to count three
                   and no more,
           the social lot of women
            might be
                  treated with scientific certitude.

    Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains,
           and the limits of variation
            are really much wider
                   than any one
            would imagine
                   from the sameness
                       of women's coiffure
                     and the favorite love-stories
                   in prose and verse.

    Here and there a cygnet
        is reared uneasily
               among the ducklings
                   in the brown pond,
           and never
              finds the living
                   stream in fellowship
                       with its own oary-footed kind.

    Here and
          there is born
               a Saint Theresa,
           foundress of nothing,
         whose loving heart-beats and sobs
              after an unattained goodness
             tremble off
            and are dispersed among hindrances,
           instead of centring
               in some long-recognizable deed.

 
  BOOK I. MISS BROOKE.

 
  CHAPTER I.

    "Since I
        can do no good
         because a woman,
    Reach constantly at something
         that is near it.

    --The Maid's Tragedy:
         BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

    Miss Brooke had
         that kind of beauty
              which seems
                  to be
                      thrown into relief
                           by poor dress.

    Her hand and wrist
        were so finely formed
         that she
            could wear sleeves
                   not less bare of style