hing to do with it? And the acts of the Little Sisters of the
Poor all over the world--are you sure they did not influence you?"

Evelyn thought of Owen's letter, the last he had written to her, for
in it he reminded her that she had nearly yielded to him. But was it
she who had resisted? She attributed her escape rather to a sudden
realisation on his part that she would be unhappy if he persisted.
Now, what was the cause of this sudden realisation, this sudden
scruple? For one seemed to have come into Owen's mind. How wonderful
it would be if it could be attributed to the prayers of the nuns,
for they had promised to pray for her, and, as the Prioress said,
everything in the world is thought: all begins in thought, all
returns to thought, the world is but our thought.

While she pondered, unable to believe that the nuns' prayers had
saved her, unwilling to discard the idea, the Prioress told of the
three nuns who came to England about thirty years ago to make the
English foundation. But of this part of the story Evelyn lost a
great deal; her interest was not caught again until the Prioress
began to tell how a young girl in society, rich and beautiful, whose
hand was sought by many, came to the rescue of these three nuns with
all her fortune and a determination to dedicate her life to God. Her
story did not altogether catch Evelyn's sympathies, and the Prioress
agreed with Evelyn that her conduct in leaving her aged parents was
open to criticism. We owe something to others, and it appears that
an idea had come into her mind when she was twelve years old that
she would like to be a nun, and though she appeared to like
admiration and to encourage one young man, yet she never really
swerved from her idea, she always told him she would enter a
convent.

Evelyn did not answer, for she was thinking of the strange threads
one finds in the weft of human life. Every one follows a thread, but
whither do the threads lead? Into what design? And while Evelyn was
thinking the Prioress told how the house in which they were now
living had been bought with five thousand out of the thirty thousand
pounds which this girl had brought to the convent. The late Prioress
was blamed for this outlay. Blame often falls on innocent shoulders,
for how could she have foreseen the increased taxation? how could she
have foreseen that no more rich postulants would come to the
convent, only penniless converts turned out by their relations, and
aged