nd nuns themselves as
the smell of tobacco to the smoker.

It had been very close in the little cell, and Maria was glad of the
coolness that came in through the open door. Her eyes were fixed on the
sky with a longing look. Again the words of her song rose to her lips,
but she checked them, remembering her aunt's presence, and with the
effort to be silent came the strong wish to be free, to be over there
upon those purple hills at evening, to look beyond and watch the sun
sinking into the distant sea, to breathe her fill of the mountain air,
to run along the crests of the hills till she should be tired, to sleep
under the open sky, to see, in dreams, to-morrow's sun rising through
the trees, to be waked by the song of birds and to find that the dream
was true.

Instead of that, and instead of all it meant to her, there was to be
the silent evening meal, the close, lighted chapel, the wearily nasal
chant of the sisters, her lonely cell, with its close darkness, the
unrefreshing sleep, broken by the bell calling her to another office in
the chapel; then, at last, the dawn, and the day that would seem as much
a prisoner as herself within the convent walls, and the praying and
nasal chanting, and the counting of sheets and pillow-cases, and doing a
little sewing, and singing to herself, perhaps, and then the being
reproved for it--the whole varied by meals of coarse food, and
periodical stations in her seat in the choir. The day! The very sun
seemed imprisoned in his corner of the garden wall, dragging slowly at
his chain, in a short half-circle, from morning till evening, like a
watch-dog tied up in a yard beside his kennel. The night was better.
Sometimes she could see the moon-rays through the cracks of the balcony
door, as she lay in her bed. She could see them against the darkness,
and the ends of them were straight white lines and round white spots on
the floor and on the walls. Her thoughts played in them, and her maiden
fancies caught them and followed them lightly out into the white night
and far away to the third world, which is dreamland. And in her dreams
she sang to the midnight stars, and clasped her bare arms round the
moon's white throat, kissing the moon-lady's pale and passionate cheek,
till she lost herself in the mysterious eyes, and found herself once
more, bathed in cool star-showers, the queen of a tender dream.

There sat the abbess, in the only chair, stolid, righteous, imposing.
The incarnation