ps care to call a coward. Reasons? She would have invented
twenty in those days, when she was not a nun, but just a loving girl
with all her womanhood before her!

If her aunt had not stolen the will and robbed her, she would have
hindered Giovanni from leaving Italy, and she would have married him,
that was the plain truth. He would have been alive now, in his youth
and his strength and his love for her, instead of having perished in
the African desert. That was the thought that tormented the guilty
woman, too: it was the certainty that her crime had indirectly sent
him to his death. So thought Sister Giovanna as she sat staring into
the dark corner through the hours of the night, and she wondered how
she had been able to say that she forgave, or had dared to hope that
she could forget. If it had been only for herself, it might have been
quite different; but her imagination had too often unwillingly
pictured the tragic death of the man she had loved so well to forgive
the woman who had caused it, now that she had revealed herself at
last.

So long as Angela had believed that her father had left no will,
because he had been in ignorance of the law, she had been able to tell
herself that her great misfortune had been inevitable; but since it
turned out that he had provided for her and had done his duty by her,
according to his light, the element of inevitable fate disappeared,
and the awful conviction that Giovanni's life had been wantonly
sacrificed to enrich Princess Chiaromonte and her children forced
itself upon her intelligence and would not be thrust out.

It seemed to Sister Giovanna that this was the first real temptation
that had assailed her since she had taken her vows, the first moment
of active regret for what might have been, as distinguished from that
heartfelt sorrow for the man who had perished which had not been
incompatible with a religious life. Recalling the Mother Superior's
words of warning, she recorded her failure, as the first of its kind,
and prayed that it might not be irretrievable, and that resentment and
regret might ebb away and leave her again as she had been before the
unforgettable voice had pierced her ears with the truth she had never
guessed.

It was a great effort now to go to the bedside and do what must be
done for the sick woman--to smooth the pillow for the head that had
thought such thoughts and to stroke the hand that had done such a
deed. She was tempted to take the litt