vy old as history, past, present, and
future were all as one, and had been so for many a tranquil generation
of calm-faced, dark-veiled women. Suddenly a great homesickness fell
upon the novice like an iron weight. She longed to rush into the house,
to fling herself at Reverend Mother's feet, and cry out that she wanted
to take back her decision, that she wanted everything to be as it had
been before. But it was too late to change. What was done, was done.

Deliberately, she had given up her home, and all the kind women who had
made the place home for her, from the time when she was a child eight
years old until now, when she was twenty-four. Sixteen years! It was a
lifetime. Memories of her child-world before convent days were more like
dreams than memories of real things that had befallen her, Mary Grant.
And yet, on this her last day in the convent, recollections of the first
were crystal clear, as they never had been in the years that lay
between.

Her father had brought her a long way, in a train. Something dreadful
had happened, which had made him stop loving her. She could not guess
what, for she had done nothing wrong so far as she knew: but a few days
before, her nurse, a kind old woman of a comfortable fatness, had put
her into a room where her father was and gently shut the door, leaving
the two alone together. Mary had gone to him expecting a kiss, for he
was always kind, though she did not feel that she knew him well--only a
little better, perhaps, than the radiant young mother whom she seldom
saw for more than five minutes at a time. But instead of kissing her as
usual, he had turned upon her a look of dislike, almost of horror, which
often came to her afterward, in dreams. Taking the little girl by the
shoulder not ungently, but very coldly, and as if he were in a great
hurry to be rid of her, he pushed rather than led her to the door.
Opening it, he called the nurse, in a sharp, displeased voice. "I don't
want the child," he said. "I can't have her here. Don't bring her to me
again without being asked." Then the kind, fat old woman had caught Mary
in her arms and carried her upstairs, a thing that had not happened for
years. And in the nursery the good creature had cried over the "poor
bairn" a good deal, mumbling strange things which Mary could not
understand. But a few words had lingered in her memory, something about
its being cruel and unjust to visit the sins of others on innocent
babies. A few day