ar
than the world which they had withdrawn from by their own free choice.

For my part, I have ever been, and remain to the end, one of those least
fitted for the Carthusian habit, notwithstanding that Sister Margaret
would paint the beatitudes and the purifying power of her Order in fair
and tempting colors. In the hours given up to sacred teaching, when she
would shed out upon us the overflowing wealth and abundant grace of her
loving spirit--insomuch that she won not less than four souls of our
small number to the sisterhood--she was wont and glad to speak of this
matter, and would say that there was a heavenly spirit living and moving
in every human breast. That it told us, with the clear and holy voice of
angels, what was divine and true, but that the noise of the world and our
own vain imaginings sounded louder and would not suffer us to hear. But
that they who took upon them the Carthusian rule and hearkened to it
speechless, in a silent home, lending no ear to distant outer voices, but
only to those within, would ere long learn to mark the heavenly voice
with the inward ear and know its warning. That voice would declare to
them the glory and the will of the Most High God, and reveal the things
that are hidden in such wise as that even here below he should take part
in the joys of paradise.

But, for all that I never was a Carthusian nun, and that my tongue was
ever apt to run too freely, I conceive that I have found the Heavenly
Spirit in the depths of my own soul and heard its voice; but in truth
this has befallen me most clearly, and with most joy, when my heart has
been most filled with that worldly love which the Carthusian Sisters shut
out with a hundred doors. And again, when I have been moved by that love
towards my neighbor which is called Charity, and wearied myself out for
him, sparing nothing that was my own, I have felt those divine emotions
plainly enough in my breast.

The Sister bid us to question her at all times without fear, and I was
ever the foremost of us all to plague her with communings. Of a certainty
she could not at all times satisfy my soul, which thirsted for knowledge,
though she never failed to calm it; for I stood firm in the faith, and
all she could tell me of God's revelation to man I accepted gladly,
without doubt or cavil. She had taught us that faith and knowledge are
things apart, and I felt that there could be no more peace for my soul if
I suffered knowledge to meddle wit