about to seek the missing girl.

CHAPTER VII.

Paula went into her nurse's room, and Perpetua, after a short and vain
search for the crazy girl, abandoned her to her fate, not without some
small scruples of conscience.

A beautifully-polished copper lamp hung from the ceiling and the little
room exactly suited its mistress both were neat and clean, trim and
spruce, simple and yet nice. Snowy transparent curtains enclosed the bed
as a protection against the mosquitoes, a crucifix of delicate
workmanship hung above the head of the couch, and the seats were covered
with good cloth of various colors, fag-ends from the looms. Pretty straw
mats lay on the floor, and pots of plants, filling the little room with
fragrance, stood on the window-sill and in a corner of the room where a
clay statuette of the Good Shepherd looked down on a praying-desk.

The door had scarcely closed behind them when Perpetua exclaimed: "But
child, how you frightened me! At so late an hour!"

"I felt I must come," said Paula. I could contain myself no longer."

"What, tears?" sighed the woman, and her own bright little eyes twinkled
through moisture. "Poor soul, what has happened now?"

She went up to the young girl to stroke her hair, but Paula rushed into
her arms, clung passionately round her neck, and burst into loud and
bitter weeping. The little matron let her weep for a while; then she
released herself, and wiped away her own tears and those of her tall
darling, which had fallen on her smooth grey hair. She took Paula's chin
in a firm hand and turned her face towards her own, saying tenderly but
decidedly: "There, that is enough. You might cry and welcome, for it
eases the heart, but that it is so late. Is it the old story:
home-sickness, annoyances, and so forth, or is there anything new?"

"Alas, indeed!" replied the girl. She pressed her handkerchief in her
hands as she went on with excited vehemence: "I am in the last extremity,
I can bear it no longer, I cannot--I cannot! I am no longer a child, and
when in the evening you dread the night and in the morning dread the day
which must be so wretched, so utterly unendurable. . . ."

"Then you listen to reason, my darling, and say to yourself that of two
evils it is wise to choose the lesser. You must hear me say once more
what I have so often represented to you before now: If we renounce our
city of refuge here and venture out into the wide world again, what shall
we find that