upils, though the school was not
yet finished.

This teaching proved very irksome to her, for it delayed the
completion of her book, and she often meditated an escape, thinking
how this might be accomplished while the nuns played at ball in the
autumn afternoon. Very often they were all in the garden, all except
Sister Agnes, the portress, and she often left her keys on the nail.
So it would be easy for Evelyn to run down the covered way and take
the keys from the nail and open the door. And the day came when she
could not resist the temptation of opening the door, not with a view
to escape; but just to know what the sensation of the open door was
like. And she stood for some time looking into the landscape,
remembering vaguely, somewhere at the back of her mind, that she
could not take the Prioress's papers with her, they did not belong to
her; the convent could institute an action for theft against her, the
Prioress not having made any formal will, only a memorandum saying
she would like Evelyn to collect her papers.

So it was necessary for her to lock the gate again, to restore the
keys to the nail, and return to the library. But in a few weeks more
her task would be done, and it would be pleasanter to go away when it
was done; and, as it has already been said, Evelyn liked landmarks.
"To pass out is easy, but the Evelyn that goes out will not be the
same as the Evelyn who came in." And a terror gathered in her mind,
remembering that she was forty, and to begin life again after forty,
and after such an experience as hers, might prove beyond her
strength. Doubts enter into every mind, doubt entered into hers;
perhaps the convent was the natural end of her life, not as a nun,
but as an oblate. The guest-room was a pleasant room, and she could
live more cheaply in the convent than elsewhere. There are cowardly
hours in every life, and there were hours when this compromise
appealed to Evelyn Innes. But if she remained she would have to
continue teaching under Mother Winifred's direction. A little revolt
awoke in her. She could not do that; and she began to think what
would happen to her when she left the convent. There would not be
money enough left her to sit down in a small flat and do nothing; she
would have to work. Well, she would have to do that in any case, for
idleness was not natural to her, and she would have to work for
somebody besides herself--for her poor people--and this she could do
by giving singing