Paula begged him not to try to fit such an ideal of the finished feminine to a little brown tame-plumaged skylark. Since they might some time meet, she wrote, it was nothing less than unfair for his mind, trained to visualize its images so clearly, to turn its full energies upon an ideal, and expect a human stranger--a happening--in the workaday physical vesture (such as is needed for New York activities) to sublimate the vision. She told him that he would certainly flee away from the reality, and that he would have no one but himself to blame. Visions, she added, do not review books nor write to authors whom they have not met. All of which, she expressed very lightly, though she could not but adore the spirit of ideality to which she had aroused his faculties. At this time Paula encountered one of the imperishable little books of the world, bracing to her spirit as a day's camp among mountain-pines. Nor could she refrain from telling Charter about "The Practice of the Presence of God," as told in the conversations of Brother Lawrence, a bare-footed Carmelite of the Seventeenth Century. "No wilderness wanderings seem to have intervened between the Red Sea and the Jordan of his experience," she quoted from the preface, and told him how simple it was for this unlearned man to be good--a mere "footman and soldier" whose illumination was the result of seeing a dry and leafless tree in mid-winter, and the thought of the change that would come to it with the Spring. His whole life thereafter, largely spent in the monastery kitchen--"a great awkward fellow, who broke everything"--was conducted as if God were his constantly advising Companion. It was a life of supernal happiness--and so simple to comprehend. Charter's reply to this letter proved largely influential in an important decision Paula was destined to make. Yes, I have communed with Brother Lawrence--carried the little volume with me on many voyages. I commend a mind that is fine enough to draw inspiration from a message so chaste and simple. You will be interested to hear that I have known another Brother Lawrence--a man whose holiness one might describe as "humble" or "lofty," with equal accuracy. This man is a Catholic priest, Father Fontanel of Martinique. His parish is in that amazing little port, Saint Pierre--where Africa and France were long ago transplanted and have fused together so enticingly. Lafcadio Hearn's country--you will say. I wonder that this inscrutable master, Hearn, missed Father Fontanel in his studies.... I was rough from the seas and a long stretch of military campaigning, when my ship turned into that lovely harbor of Saint Pierre. Finding Father Fontanel, I stayed over several ships, and the healing of his companionship restores me even now to remember.