s in the garden, and where there is most sun there
is a large bed of carnations, but not of the finer sorts; they are
just plain red and white ones, that fill the air with a scent of warm
cloves on still mornings in the late spring, when it is beginning to
be hot. But if this description has seemed tedious, you must know that
Angela lived in the convent and worked there for five whole years
after Giovanni was lost in Africa; so that it was needful to say
something about her surroundings.

An accomplished psychologist would easily fill a volume with the
history of Angela's soul from the day on which she learned the bad
news till the morning when she made her profession and took the final
vows of her order in the little convent church. But one great
objection to psychological analysis in novels seems to be that the
writer never gets beyond analysing what he believes that he himself
would have felt if placed in the 'situation' he has invented for his
hero or heroine. Thus analysed, Angela Chiaromonte would not have
known herself, any more than those who knew her best, such as Madame
Bernard and her aunt the Princess, would have recognised her. I shall
not try to 'factorise' the result represented by her state of mind
from time to time; still less shall I employ a mathematical process to
prove that the ratio of _dx_ to _dy_ is twice _x_, the change in
Angela at any moment of her moral growth.

What has happened must be logical, just because it has happened; if we
do not understand the logic, that may or may not be the worse for us,
but the facts remain.

It is easy, too, to talk of a 'vocation' and to lay down the law
regarding it, in order to say that such and such a woman acted wisely
in entering a religious order, or that such another made a mistake.
The fact that there is no such law is itself the reason why neither a
man nor a woman is permitted nowadays to take permanent vows until
after a considerable period of probation, first as a 'postulant' and
then as a novice.

For my own part, when Angela Chiaromonte left Madame Bernard's
pleasant rooms in Trastevere and went into the convent hospital of
Santa Giovanna d'Aza through the green door, I do not believe that she
had the very smallest intention of becoming a nun, nor that she felt
anything like what devout persons call a 'vocation.' It was not to
disappear from the world for ever that she went there, and it was not
in order to be alone with her sorrow, though t