A more innocent wish
never entered into the heart of a human being, you will say, yet
this letter causes me many qualms, for I cannot help thinking that I
have been untruthful; I have--lied is, perhaps, too strong a word--
but I have certainly equivocated to the Prioress, and deceived her,
I think, though it is possible, wishing to be deceived, she lent
herself to the deception. Now I am preferring an accusation against
the dear Prioress! My goodness, Monsignor, what a strange and
difficult thing life is, and how impossible to tell the exact truth!
If one tries to be exact one ends by entangling the thread, and
getting it into very ugly knots indeed. In trying to tell the truth,
I have been guilty of a calumny against the Prioress, nothing short
of that, Monsignor, nothing short of that--against the dear
Prioress, who deserves better of me, for her kindness towards me
since I have been to the convent has never ceased for a single
instant!

"One of her many kindnesses is the subject of this letter. When I
arrived here the nuns were not decided, and I was not decided,
whether I should live in the convent as I did before, as a guest, or
whether, in view of the length of my probable residence in the
convent, I should be given the postulant's cap and gown. Mother Mary
Hilda thought it would be dangerous to open the doors of the
novitiate to one who admitted she was entering the religious life
only as an experiment, especially to one like myself, an opera
singer, who, however zealously she might conform to the rule, would
bring a certain atmosphere with her into the novitiate, one which
could not fail to affect a number of young and innocent girls, and
perhaps deleteriously. I think I agree with Mother Mary Hilda. All
this I heard afterwards from Mother Philippa, who, in her homely way,
let out the secret of these secret deliberations to me--how the
Prioress, who desired the investiture, said that every postulant
entered the novitiate as an experiment. 'But believing,' Mother Mary
Hilda interrupted, 'that the experiment will succeed, whereas, in
her case, the postulant does not believe at all.'

"As it was impossible for the Mothers to decide I was sent for, and
asked whether I thought the experiment would succeed or fail.' But
what experiment?--I had to ask. And the Prioress and Mother Hilda
were not agreed, their points of view were not the same; mine was,
again, a different point of view, mine being, as you know, a
de