ourse I know that I should have
perished utterly if I had not put them aside, but even the thought
of my great escape does not altogether satisfy me, and I would that
I might have escaped without leaving them, the four poor women whom
I took under my special protection, and who came to see me the day
before I came to the convent to ask me not to leave them. Four poor
women, poor beyond poverty, came to ask me not to go into the
convent. 'The convent will be always able to get on without you,
miss.' Such poverty as theirs is silent, they only asked me not to
leave them, not to go to the convent. Among them was poor Lena, a
hunchback seamstress, who has never been able to do more than keep
herself from starving. It is hard that cripples should have to
support themselves. She has, I think, always lived in fear lest she
should not be able to pay for her room at the end of the week, and
her food was never certain. How little it was, yet to get it caused
her hours and hours of weary labour. Three and sixpence a week was
all she could earn. Poor Lena, what has become of her? So little of
the money which my singing brings to the convent would secure her
against starvation, yet I cannot send her a penny. Doesn't it seem
hard, Monsignor? And if she were to die in my absence would not the
memory of my desertion haunt me for ever? Should I be able to forgive
myself? You will answer that to save one's soul is everybody's first
concern, but to sacrifice one's own soul for the poor may not be
theological, but it would be sublime. You who are so kind,
Monsignor, will not reprove me for writing in this strain, writing
heresy to you from a convent devoted to the Perpetual Adoration of
the Sacrament, but you will understand, and will write something
that will hearten me, for I am a little disheartened to-day. You will
write, perhaps, to the Reverend Mother, asking her if I may send Lena
some money; that would be a great boon if she would allow it. In my
anxiety to escape from the consequences of my own sins I had almost
forgotten this poor girl, but yesterday she came into my mind. It
was the lay sisters who reminded me of the poor people I left; the
lay sisters are what is most beautiful in the convent.

"Yesterday, when the grass was soaked with dew and the crisp leaves
hung in a death-like silence, one of them, Sister Bridget, came down
the path carrying a pail of water, 'going,' she said, answering me,
'to scrub the tiles which cover