Am I cruel and wicked? Do you hate me?" said Soeur Lucie,
rather aggrieved in her turn.

"No, no," cried Madelon, with compunction, and throwing her
arms round Soeur Lucie's neck; "you are very kind, Soeur Lucie,
and you won't let them make me a nun, will you? You will tell
them all that I should be miserable--ah! I should die, I know I
should!"

"Well, well, we will not talk about it any more to-night. As
for me, I have nothing to do with it--nothing; but I cannot
have you make yourself ill with chattering; so now let me put
your pillow straight, and then you must go to sleep as fast as
you can."

With a final shake of the pillow and arrangement of the bed-
clothes, Soeur Lucie went away, leaving Madelon, not to sleep,
but to lie broad awake, framing the most dismal little
pictures of the future. And was this to be the end of it all,
then?--the end of her vague dreams, her undefined hopes, which,
leaping over a dim space of intervening years, had rested on a
future of indefinite brightness lying somewhere outside these
convent walls? Ah, was all indeed at an end? Never to pass
these dull walls again, never to see anything but these dreary
rooms,--all her life to be one unvarying, relentless routine,
day after day, year after year--to be forced to teach stupid
children, like Soeur Ursule, or to make jam and embroider
alter-cloths, like Soeur Lucie, to say such long prayers, and
to wear such ugly dresses, thinks poor Madelon, with a queer
jumble of the duties and obligations of a nun's life. Ah! what
would be the use of getting well and strong again, if that
were all that life had in store for her? "Why did I not die?"
thinks the poor child, tossing restlessly from side to side.
"I wish I was dead! Ah! why did I not die? I wish I had never
been born!" To her, as to all inexperienced minds, life
appeared as a series of arbitrary events, rather than as a
chain of dependent circumstances ceaselessly modifying each
other, and she could not conceive the possibility of any
gradual change of position being brought about in the slow
course of years. The long succession of grey, weary days,
which she had lately taught herself to consider as a path that
must be traversed, but which would still lead ultimately to a
future of most supreme happiness, suddenly seemed to terminate
in a grave black as death itself, from which there could be no
escape. "If papa were here," thinks Madelon, "he would never
allow it; he would never