you should--you might blame me, hate me, perhaps."

"I never shall do either, whatever happens," the novice said, earnestly
and gravely. She did not look at her friend as she spoke, though they
were so nearly of the same height as they walked, their arms linked
together, that they could gaze straight into one another's eyes.
Instead, she looked up at the sky, through the groined gray ceiling of
tree-branches, as if offering a vow. And seeing her uplifted profile
with its pure features and clear curve of dark lashes, Peter thought how
beautiful she was, of a beauty quite unearthly, and perhaps unsuited to
the world. With a pang, she wondered if such a girl would not have been
safer forever in the convent where she had lived most of her years. And
though she herself was four years younger, she felt old and mature, and
terribly wise compared with Sister Rose. An awful sense of
responsibility was upon her. She was afraid of it. Her pretty blond
face, with its bright and shrewd gray eyes, looked almost drawn, and
lost the fresh colour that made the little golden freckles charming as
the dust of flower-pollen on her rounded cheeks.

"But I _have_ got something to do with it, haven't I?" she persisted,
longing for contradiction, yet certain that it would not come.

"I hardly know--to be quite honest," Mary answered. "I don't know what I
might have done if you hadn't come back and told me things about your
life, and all your travels with your father--things that made me tingle.
Maybe I should never have had the courage without that incentive. But,
Peter, I'll tell you something I couldn't have told you till to-day.
Since the very beginning of my novitiate I was never happy, never at
rest."

"Truly? You wanted to go, even then, for two whole years?"

"I don't know what I wanted. But suddenly all the sweet calm was broken.
You've often looked out from the dormitory windows over the lake, and
seen how a wind springing up in an instant ruffles the clear surface.
It's just like a mirror broken into a thousand tiny fragments. Well, it
was so with me, with my spirit. And after all these years, when I'd been
so contented, so happy that I couldn't even bear, as a schoolgirl, to go
away for two or three days to visit Lady MacMillan in the holidays,
without nearly dying of homesickness before I could be brought back! As
a postulant I was just as happy, too. You know, I wouldn't go out into
the world to try my resolve, as Reverend Mot