then, a thing that can be measured and cut in lengths, Mother?
The more you tend a plant, the better it flourishes. If I am to love
none save God, will not my heart dry and wither, so that I shall not be
able to love Him? Sometimes I think it is doing so."

"You think!" she said. "What right have you to think? Leave your
superiors to think for you; and you, cultivate holy obedience, as you
ought. All the heresies and schisms that ever vexed the Church have
arisen from men setting themselves up to _think_ when they should simply
have obeyed."

"But, Mother, forgive me! I cannot help thinking."

"That shows how far you are from perfection, Sister. A religious who
aims at perfection should never allow herself to think, except only how
she can best obey. Beware of pride and presumption, the instant you
allow yourself to depart from the perfection of obedience."

"But, Mother, that is the perfection of a thing. And I am a woman."

"Sister Annora, you are reasoning, when your duty is to obey."

If holy obedience means to obey without thinking, I am afraid I shall
never be perfect in it! I do not know how people manage to compress
themselves into stones like that.

I tried Mother Gaillarde next, since I had only found an icicle clad in
Mother Ada's habit. I was afraid of her, I confess, for I knew she
would bite: and she did so. I begged yet harder, for I had heard that
Mother Alianora was worse. Was I not even to see her before she died?

"What on earth does it matter?" said Mother Gaillarde. "Aren't you both
going to Heaven? You can talk there--without fear of disobedience."

"My Lord Prior said. Mother, in his last charge, that a convent ought
to be a little heaven. If that be so, why should we not talk now?"

Mother Gaillarde's laugh positively frightened me. It was the hardest,
driest, most metallic sound I ever heard.

"Sister Annora, you must be a baby! You have lived in a convent nearly
fifty years, and you ask if it be a little heaven!"

"I cry you mercy, Mother. I asked if it should not be so."

"That's another matter," said she, with a second laugh, but it did not
startle me like the first. "We should all be perfect, of course. Pity
we aren't!"

As she worked away at the plums she was stoning without saying either
yes or no, I ventured to repeat my question.

"You may do as you are told!" was Mother Gaillarde's answer. "Can't you
let things alone?"

Snappishly as she spoke, y