se, how a sign had been
vouchsafed to these three young women, daughters of two bankers and
a silk merchant, and how all three had accepted the signs vouchsafed
to them and become nuns.

"I am not depreciating the active Orders when I say they are more
easily understood by the average man than--shall I say the Carmelite
or any contemplative Order, our own for example. To relieve
suffering makes a ready appeal to his sympathies, but he is
incapable of realising what the world would be were it not for our
prayers. It would be a desert. In truth the active and the
contemplative Orders are identical, when we look below the surface."

"How are they identical, Mother?"

"In this way: the object of the active Orders is to relieve
suffering, but the good they do is not a direct good. There will
always be suffering in the world, the little they relieve is only
like a drop taken out of the ocean. It might even be argued that if
you eliminate on one side the growth is greater on the other; by
preserving the lives of old people one makes the struggle harder for
others. There is as much suffering in the world now as there was
before the Little Sisters began their work--that is what I mean."

"Then, dear Mother, the Order does not fulfil its purpose."

"On the contrary, Evelyn, it fulfils its purpose, but its purpose is
not what the world thinks it is; it is by the noble example they set
that the Little Sisters of the Poor achieve their purpose. It is by
forsaking the world that they achieve their purpose, by their
manifestation that the things of this world are not worth
considering. The Little Sisters pray in outward acts, whereas the
contemplative Orders pray only in thought. The purpose, as I have
said, is identical; the creation of an atmosphere of goodness,
without which the world could not exist. There are two atmospheres,
the atmosphere of good and the atmosphere of evil, and both are
created by thought, whether thought in the concrete form of an act
or thought in its purest form--an aspiration. Therefore all those
who devote themselves to prayer, whether their prayers take the form
of good works or whether their prayer passes in thought, collaborate
in the production of a moral atmosphere, and it is the moral
atmosphere which enables man to continue his earthly life. Yourself
is an instance of what I mean. You were inspired to leave the stage,
but whence did that inspiration come? Are you sure that our prayers
had not