drop of
water. Oh, Father, how shall I tell you the grievous pains that I
endured? Sometimes I so feared the sight of the mocking ripples
overhead that I hid my eyes from their approach, lying face down on my
burning bed till I knew that they were gone; yet on cloudy days, when
they did not come, the heat was even worse to bear.

By day I hardly dared trust myself in the garden, for the nuns walked
there, and one fiery noon they found me hanging so close above the tank
that they snatched me away, crying out that I had tried to destroy
myself. The scandal of this reaching the Abbess, she sent for me to
know what demon had beset me; and when I wept and said, the longing to
bathe my burning body, she broke into great anger and cried out: "Do
you not know that this is a sin well-nigh as great as the other, and
condemned by all the greatest saints? For a nun may be tempted to take
her life through excess of self-scrutiny and despair of her own
worthiness; but this desire to indulge the despicable body is one of
the lusts of the flesh, to be classed with concupiscence and adultery."
And she ordered me to sleep every night for a month in my heavy gown,
with a veil upon my face.

Now, Father, I believe it was this penance that drove me to sin. For we
were in the dog-days, and it was more than flesh could bear. And on the
third night, after the portress had passed, and the lights were out, I
rose and flung off my veil and gown, and knelt in my window fainting.
There was no moon, but the sky was full of stars. At first the garden
was all blackness; but as I looked I saw a faint twinkle between the
cypress-trunks, and I knew it was the starlight on the tank. The water!
The water! It was there close to me--only a few bolts and bars were
between us.

The portress was a heavy sleeper, and I knew where her keys hung, on a
nail just within the door of her cell. I stole thither, unlatched the
door, seized the keys and crept barefoot down the corridor. The bolts
of the cloister-door were stiff and heavy, and I dragged at them till
the veins in my wrists were bursting. Then I turned the key and it
cried out in the ward. I stood still, my whole body beating with fear
lest the hinges too should have a voice--but no one stirred, and I
pushed open the door and slipped out. The garden was as airless as a
pit, but at least I could stretch my arms in it; and, oh, my Father,
the sweetness of the stars! The stones in the path cut my feet as I