otes, does not mitigate the sorrow at the core; the
rich garb in which the idea is clothed does not rob the song of its
humanity.

Evelyn's voice filled with the beauty of the melody, and she sang the
phrase which closes the stanza--a phrase which dances like a puff of
wind in an evening bough--so tenderly, so lovingly, that acute tears
trembled under the eyelids. And all her soul was in her voice when
she sang the phrase of passionate faith which the lonely,
disheartened woman sings, looking up from the desert rock. Then her
voice sank into the calm beauty of the "Ave Maria," now given with
confidence in the Virgin's intercession, and the broken chords passed
down the keyboard, uniting with the last note of the solemn octaves,
which had sounded through the song like bells heard across an evening
landscape.

"How beautifully she sings it!" a man said out loud, and his
neighbour looked and wondered, for the man's eyes were full of tears.

"You have a beautiful voice, child," said the Prioress when they came
out of church, "and it is a real pleasure to me to hear you sing, and
it will be a greater pleasure when I know that for the future your
great gift will be devoted to the service of God. Shall we go into
the garden for a little walk before supper? We shall have it to
ourselves, and the air will do you good."

It was the month of June, and the convent garden was in all the
colour of its summer--crimson and pink; and all the scents of the
month, stocks and sweetbriar, were blown up from St. Peter's Walk. In
the long mixed borders the blue larkspurs stood erect between
Canterbury bells and the bush peonies, crimson and pink, and here and
there amid furred leaves, at the end of a long furred stalk, flared
the foolish poppy, roses like pale porcelain clustered along the low
terraced walk and up the house itself, over the stucco walls; but
more beautiful than the roses were the delicate petals of the
clematis, stretched out like fingers upon the walls.

An old nun was being wheeled up and down the terrace in a bath-chair
by one of the lay sisters, that she might enjoy the sweet air.

"I must say a word to Sister Lawrence," the Prioress said, "she will
never forgive me if I don't. She is the eldest member of our
community; if she lives another two years, she will complete half a
century of convent life."

As they drew near Evelyn saw two black eyes in a white, almost
fleshless face. The eyes alone seemed to live, an