t? To die?
Not even that! Others will be taken, but I shall live--thirty, forty,
fifty years, knowing that he is alive--knowing that I may see him any
day!'

The elder woman's white fingers twined round each other more
desperately, for Sister Giovanna's face was turned full to her now,
and their eyes were meeting; the young nun's were fierce with pain,
but the Mother's were strangely lustreless and dull.

'No,' she said, mechanically answering the last words, 'you must not
see him.'

'Not see him once?'

Sister Giovanna leaned far forwards, grasping the arms of the
easy-chair, and her voice came thick and hoarse. Did the woman with the
marble face think that she, too, was made of stone? Not see the man she
had loved, who had been suddenly, violently dead, who was alive again,
and had come back to her? The Mother could not be in earnest! If she
was, why did she not answer now? Why was she sitting there, with that
strange look, silently wringing her hands?

Even in her cruel distress Sister Giovanna felt a sort of wonder.
Perhaps the Mother had not meant what she said, and would not speak
lest she should contradict herself. The mere thought was a hope;
whether for good or evil the tortured girl knew not, but it loosed her
tongue.

'He will come to me!' she cried. 'He will, I tell you! You do not know
him! Did you hear his voice as I did when he called me? Did you see
his face? Could walls or bars keep such a man from the woman he loves?
I must face him myself, and to face him I must kill something in
me--cut it out, tear it up from its roots--I am only a woman after all!
A nun can be a woman still, a weak woman, who has loved a man very,
very dearly----'

'Oh, Angela, hush! For the love of Heaven, my child, my child!'

To Sister Giovanna's unspeakable amazement, the unbending nature was
breaking down, the marble saint, with the still white face, who had
bidden her pray, and never see Giovanni again. She felt herself lifted
from her seat and clasped in a despairing embrace; she felt the small
nervous frame shaking in the storm of an emotion she could not
understand, though she knew it was as great as her own and as terrible
to bear, and that the heart that beat against hers was breaking, too.

Neither shed a tear; tears would have been heavenly refreshment, but
they would not come. Another moment and Angela felt herself sinking
back into her chair, and when she opened her eyes the Mother Superior
was at the ta