instructions, and the brothers were alone together.

'When I left her,' Giovanni said, 'we were engaged to be married. I
wrote to her just before I sailed, but she has not received the letter
yet.'

'What shall you do?' asked Ugo, watching him with sympathy.

'Do? Marry her, of course! Do you suppose I have changed my mind?'

'But she is evidently a nun,' objected Ugo. 'She must have taken
irrevocable vows. These nurses are not like Sisters of Charity, I
believe, who make their promise for a year only and then are free
during one night, to decide whether they will renew it.'

Giovanni Severi laughed, but not lightly, nor carelessly, nor
scornfully. It was the short, energetic laughter of a determined man
who does not believe anything impossible.

CHAPTER XIII

After a long time, Sister Giovanna lifted her head very slowly, sat
up, and passed her hand over her eyes, while the Mother Superior still
kept one arm round her, thinking that she might faint again at any
moment. But she did not.

'Thank you,' she said, with difficulty. 'You are very good to me,
Mother. I think I can walk now.'

'Not yet.'

The elder woman's hand was on her wrist, keeping her in her seat.

'I must go back to my work,' she said, but not much above a whisper.

'Not yet. When you are better, you must come to my room for a little
while and rest there.'

Sister Giovanna looked old then, for her face was grey and the deep
lines of suffering were like furrows of age; she seemed much older
than Mother Veronica, who was over forty. A minute or two passed and
she made another effort, and this time the Mother helped her. She was
weak but not exactly unsteady; her feet were like leaden weights that
she had to lift at every step.

When they were alone in the small room and the door was shut, the
Mother Superior closed the window, too; for the cloister was very
resonant and voices carried far. She made Sister Giovanna sit in the
old horse-hair easy-chair, leaning her head against the round black
and white worsted cushion that was hung across the back by a cotton
cord. She herself sat in the chair she used at her writing-table.

She did not know what had happened in the hall, but what she saw told
her that the Sister's fainting fit had not been due only to a passing
physical weakness. She herself seemed to be suffering when she spoke,
and not one of all the many Sisters and novices who had come to her in
distress, at one time or ano