's
adventure with her counterpart?" Evelyn nodded and tried to repress a
smile. "It is difficult not to smile, so ridiculous is her story; and
if I didn't look upon the matter as very serious, I shouldn't be able
to prevent myself from smiling."

"But you will easily be able, Mother, to smile at this nonsense.
Veronica, who is a most pious girl, will not allow her mind to dwell
on counterparts since she knows it to be a sin, or likely to lead to
sin, and Angela and the others--if there are any others--"

"That will not make an end to the evil. Everything, my dear Teresa,
declines. Ideas, like everything else, have their term of life.
Everything declines, everything turns to clay, and I look upon this
desire for spiritual visitations as a warning that the belief which
led to the founding of this Order has come to an end! From such noble
prayers as led to the founding of this Order we have declined to
prayers for the visitation of counterparts."

Evelyn was about to interrupt, but the Prioress shook her head,
saying, "Well, if not the whole of the convent, at all events part of
it--several novices." And she told Evelyn the disease would spread
from nun to nun, and that there was no way of checking it.

"Unless by becoming an active order," Evelyn answered, "founding a
school."

The old woman rose to her feet instantly, saying that she had spoken
out of a moment of weakness; and that it would be cowardly for her to
give way to Mother Philippa and Sister Winifred; she would never
acquiesce in any alteration of the rule.

"But you, too," she said, "are inclined towards the school?"

Evelyn admitted she was thinking of the poor, people whom she had
left to their fate, so that she might save herself from sin; and the
talk of the two women dropped from the impersonal to the personal,
Evelyn telling the Prioress a great deal more of herself than she had
told before, and the Prioress confiding to Evelyn in the end her own
story, a simple one, which Evelyn listened to with tears in her eyes.

"Before I came here I was married, and before I was married I often
used to come to the convent, for I was fond of the nuns, and was a
pious girl. But after my marriage I was captured by life--the vine of
life grew about me and held me tight. One day, passing by the door of
the convent, my husband said, 'It is lucky that love rescued you, for
when I met you you were a little taken by the convent, and might have
become a nun if you h