t,' continued Monsignor Saracinesca, 'I am a man
of the world in the sense of having belonged to it, and I now live
less apart from it than I could wish, though it is not such a
thoroughly bad place as those say who do not know it. I do not feel
that I got rid of all obligations to those who still belong to it when
I was ordained, and I do not think that when you took the veil in a
working order, you dropped all obligation to the persons with whom you
had lived till then. In doing so, you might be depriving some one else
of a right.'

Sister Giovanna listened to this exposition in silence and tried to
follow it.

'In my opinion,' the prelate went on, 'Giovanni Severi has a just
claim to see you. I speak under authority and I may be wrong, but it
can only be a matter of judgment and of opinion, and since your Mother
Superior has asked for mine, I give it as well as I can. You are not a
cloistered nun, Sister. There is no reason why you should not receive
a friend whom you have believed to be dead for years and who has
unexpectedly come back to life.'

'Back to the life I left for his sake!'

Again she looked away from the light, but her face could not turn
whiter than it was.

'It was terribly sudden,' said Monsignor Saracinesca, after a moment's
pause. 'You will no doubt wait a few days before seeing him, till you
feel quite able to face what must be a very painful interview.'

'I am not afraid of it now. I was weak when we recognised each other.
I cannot quite remember--I heard him call me and I saw his eyes----'

'And you must have fainted. You were carried out to the well at once.'

'Who carried me?' asked the nun quickly.

'Doctor Pieri and Giovanni Severi.'

She made a slight movement.

'He carried me!'

She spoke almost unconsciously, and a very faint glow rose through her
paleness, as when white glass is warmed an instant in the mouth of the
furnace and then drawn back and quickly cooled again.

'Shall I talk with him before you meet?' asked the churchman
presently.

Sister Giovanna did not answer at once; she seemed to be thinking.

'You know better than any one what my life has been,' she said at
last. 'It was to you that I went for advice five years ago, and again
before I took the veil. If you had thought it even distantly possible
that he might be alive, you would not have let me take final vows.'

'Heaven forbid!' answered Monsignor Saracinesca very earnestly.

'Though I believed him d