mastering a despair, as if she had been overwhelmed by the
crowning disaster of expulsion from St. Crux. But one warning could be
read in such a change as this. Into the space of little more than a
year she had crowded the wearing and wasting emotions of a life. The
bountiful gifts of health and strength, so prodigally heaped on her by
Nature, so long abused with impunity, were failing her at last.

She looked up at the far faint blue of the sky. She heard the joyous
singing of birds among the ivy that clothed the ruins. Oh the cold
distance of the heavens! Oh the pitiless happiness of the birds! Oh the
lonely horror of sitting there, and feeling old and weak and worn, in
the heyday of her youth! She rose with a last effort of resolution,
and tried to keep back the hysterical passion swelling at her heart by
moving and looking about her. Rapidly and more rapidly she walked to and
fro in the sunshine. The exercise helped her, through the very fatigue
that she felt from it. She forced the rising tears desperately back to
their sources; she fought with the clinging pain, and wrenched it from
its hold. Little by little her mind began to clear again: the despairing
fear of herself grew less vividly present to her thoughts. There were
reserves of youth and strength in her still to be wasted; there was a
spirit sorely wounded, but not yet subdued.

She gradually extended the limits of her walk; she gradually recovered
the exercise of her observation.

At the western extremity the remains of the monastery were in a less
ruinous condition than at the eastern. In certain places, where the
stout old walls still stood, repairs had been made at some former time.
Roofs of red tile had been laid roughly over four of the ancient cells;
wooden doors had been added; and the old monastic chambers had been
used as sheds to hold the multifarious lumber of St. Crux. No padlocks
guarded any of the doors. Magdalen had only to push them to let the
daylight in on the litter inside. She resolved to investigate the sheds
one after the other--not from curiosity, not with the idea of making
discoveries of any sort. Her only object was to fill up the vacant time,
and to keep the thoughts that unnerved her from returning to her mind.

The first shed she opened contained the gardener's utensils, large and
small. The second was littered with fragments of broken furniture,
empty picture-frames of worm-eaten wood, shattered vases, boxes without
covers,