"

At the street door Glory asked Mrs. Jupe for her own address, and the
woman gave her a card, saying if she ever wanted to leave the hospital it
would be easy to help such a fine-looking young woman as she was to make
a bit of living for herself.

Polly recovered speedily from the trouble of the child's departure, and
presently assumed an easy and almost patronizing tone toward Glory,
pretending to be amused and even a little indignant when asked how soon
she expected to be fit for business again, and able to do without Lord
Robert's assistance.

"To tell you the truth," she said, "I was as much to blame as he was. I
wanted to escape from the drudgery of the hospital, and I knew he would
take me when the time came."

Glory left early, vowing in her heart she would come no more. When she
changed her omnibus at Piccadilly the Circus was very full of women.

"Letter for you, nurse," said the porter as she entered the hospital. It
was from John Storm.

"Dear Glory: I have at length decided to enter the Brotherhood at
Bishopsgate Street, and I am to go into the monastery this evening. It is
not as a visitor that I am going this time, but as a postulant or novice
and in the hope of becoming worthy in due course to take the vows of
lifelong consecration. Therefore I am writing to you probably for the
last time, and parting from you perhaps forever.

"Since we came up to London together I have suffered many shocks and
disappointments, and I seem to have been torn in ribbons. My cherished
dreams have proved to be delusions; the palaces I had built up for myself
have turned out to be pasteboard, gilt, and rubbish; I have been robbed
of all my jewels, or they have shown themselves to be shingle stones. In
this condition of shame and disillusionment I am now resolved to escape
at the same time from the world and from myself, for I am tired of both
alike, and already I feel as if a great weight had been lifted off me.

"But I wish to speak of you. You must have thought me cantankerous, and
so I have been sometimes, but always by conviction and on principle. I
could not countenance the fashionable morality that is corrupting the
manhood of the laity, or endure the toleration that is making the clergy
thoroughly wicked; I could not without a pang see you cater to the
world's appetites or be drawn into its gaieties and frivolities; and it
was agony to me to fear that a girl of your pure if passionate nature
might perhaps f