there is no remedy but
death."

There are two dormitories in our house, and Margaret is in the west one,
while I sleep in the eastern. At the head of the stairs we part to our
places. That I should speak a word to her in the night is impossible.
And in the day I can never see her without a score of eyes upon us,
especially Mother Gaillarde's, and she seems to have eyes, not in the
back of her head only, but all over her veil.

I suppose, if we had lived like real sisters and not make-believe ones,
Margaret and I would have had a little chamber to ourselves in our
father's castle, and we could have talked to each other, and told our
secrets if we wished, and have comforted one another when our hearts
were sad. And I do not understand why it should please our Lord so much
more to have us shut up here, making believe to be one family with
thirty other women who are not our sisters, except in the sense that all
Christian women are children of God. I wonder where it is in the
Gospels, that our Lord commanded it to be done. I cannot find it in my
Evangelisterium. I dare say the holy Apostles ordered it afterwards: or
perhaps it is in some Gospel I have never seen. There are only four in
my book.

If that strange priest would come again to confess us, I should like
very much to ask him several questions of that sort. I never saw any
other priest that I could speak to freely, as I could to him. Father
Hamon would not understand me, I am sure: and Father Benedict would
rebuke me sharply whether he understood or not; telling me for the
fiftieth time that I ought to humble myself to the dust because my
vocation is so imperfect. Well, I know I have no vocation. But why
then was I shut up here when God had not called me? I had no choice
allowed me. Or why, seeing things are thus, cannot the Master or some
one else loose me from my vow, and let me go back to the world which
they keep blaming me because they say I love?

Yet what should I do in the world? My mother has been dead many years,
for her name is in the obituary of the house. As to my brothers and
sisters, I no more know how many of them are living, nor where they are,
than if they dwelt in the stars. I remember my brother Hugh, because he
used to take my part when the others teased me: but as to my younger
brothers, I only know there were some; I forget even their names. I
think one was Hubert, or Robert, or something that ended in _bert_. And
my sis