s afterward Mary's father, very thin and
strange-looking, with hard lines in his handsome brown face, took her
with him on a journey, after nurse had kissed her many times with
streaming tears. At last they had got out of the train into a carriage,
and driven a long way. At evening they had come to a tall, beautiful
gateway, which had carved stone animals on high pillars at either side.
That was the gate of the Convent of Saint Ursula-of-the-Lake, the gate
of Mary's home-to-be: and in a big, bare parlour, with long windows and
a polished oak floor that reflected curious white birds and dragons of
an escutcheon on the ceiling, Reverend Mother had received them. She had
taken Mary on her lap; and when, after much talk about school and years
to come, the child's father had gone, shadowy, dark-robed women had
glided softly into the room. They had crowded round the little girl,
like children round a new doll, petting and murmuring over her: and she
had been given cake and milk, and wonderful preserved fruit, such as she
had never tasted.

Some of those dear women had gone since then, not as she was going, out
into an unknown, maybe disappointing, world, but to a place where
happiness was certain, according to their faith. Mary had not forgotten
one of the kind faces--and all those who remained she loved dearly; yet
she was leaving them to-day. Already it was time. She had wished to come
out into the garden alone for this last walk, and to wear the habit of
her novitiate, though she had voluntarily given up the right to it
forever. She must go in and dress for the world, as she had not dressed
for years which seemed twice their real length. She must go in, and bid
them all goodbye--Reverend Mother, and the nuns, and novices, and the
schoolgirls, of whose number she had once been.

She stood still, looking toward the far end of the path, her back turned
toward the gray face of the convent.

"Goodbye, dear old sundial, that has told so many of my hours," she
said. "Goodbye, sweet rose-trees that I planted, and all the others I've
loved so long. Goodbye, dear laurel bushes, that know my thoughts.
Goodbye, everything."

Her arms hung at her sides, lost in the folds of her veil. Slowly tears
filled her eyes, but did not fall until a delicate sound of
light-running feet on grass made her start, and wink the tears away.
They rolled down her white cheeks in four bright drops, which she
hastily dried with the back of her hand; and