corner
and then compared her pretty watch with it, laid her olive-green
parasol across the table, but took it off again almost immediately and
dropped the tip to the floor. The Sister's impassive stillness seemed
meant for a reproach and made her nervous. The certainty that the
motionless woman opposite her was Angela, calmly declining to know
her, was very disagreeable. She tried the excuse of pretending in her
thoughts that there was still a reasonable doubt about it, but she
could no longer succeed; yet to address her niece by her baptismal
name would be to acknowledge herself finally beaten in the contest of
coolness, after having at first succeeded in making her adversary
change colour.

The ticking of the clock was so distinct that it made an echo in the
high hall; the morning sun streamed across the pavement, from the
cloistered garden the chirping of a few sparrows and the sharper
twitter of the house-swallow that had already nested under the eaves
sounded very clearly through the closed glass door.

The Princess could not bear the silence any longer, and she looked at
Sister Giovanna with a rather pinched smile.

'My dear Angela,' she said, 'there is really no reason why we should
keep up this absurd little comedy any longer, is there?'

The nun did not betray the least surprise at the sudden question.

'If you have no reason for it, I have none,' she answered, but her
gaze was so steady that the Princess looked away. 'I prefer to be
called Sister Giovanna, however,' she added, after an instant's pause.

The Princess, though not always courageous, was naturally overbearing
and rather quarrelsome, and her temper rose viciously as soon as the
restraint which an artificial situation had imposed was removed.

'I really think you should not have kept me in doubt so long,' she
said. 'After playing nurse to me in my own house, you can hardly have
taken me for another person. But as for you, your dress has changed
you so completely, and you look so much older than any one would have
thought possible, that you need not be surprised if I was not quite
sure it was really you!'

Her niece listened unmoved. A trained nurse, even if she be a nun, may
learn a good deal about human nature in five years, and Sister
Giovanna was naturally quick to perceive and slow to forget. She
understood now, much better than the Princess supposed.

'I am not at all surprised,' she said, almost smiling, 'and it cannot
possibly mat