ead, you knew that I loved him with all my
heart.'

'Yes. As dearly as when you had last seen him alive.'

'I love him still. Is that wrong?'

'No.'

He said the word without hesitation, in all sincerity and true
conviction, but the nun had expected another answer; a quick movement
of the head showed that she was surprised.

'Are you sure?' she asked in a low and wondering tone.

'Yes, because I am sure that your love for him is as innocent as it
ever was. The religious life is not meant to kill human affection.
Saint Benedict loved his sister Scholastica devotedly; Saint Francis
was probably more sincerely attached to Saint Clare than to any living
person.'

'I only know that I love him as dearly as ever,' said Sister Giovanna.

The churchman looked at her keenly for a moment, and she did not avoid
his eyes.

'Would you break your vows for him?' he asked, with sudden directness.

The nun started as if he had struck her and half rose from her chair.

'Break my vows?' she cried, her eyes blazing with indignation.

But Monsignor Saracinesca only nodded and laid his thin hand flat on
the table, towards her. She sank to her seat again.

'Then I know that, although you may love him more than any one in the
world, you do not love him better than the work you have promised to
do.'

'Heaven forbid!'

He had used the very same expression a few moments earlier, but with a
different tone; for him it had been an asseveration of good faith, but
with her it was more like a prayer. She had resented his question as
if it had been an insult, but when he showed how much he trusted her,
she began to distrust herself. She would die the martyr's death rather
than break her vows in deed, but she was too diffident of her own
womanhood not to fear a fall from the dignity of heartfelt resignation
to the inward ignominy of an earthly regret. Besides, 'the work she
had promised to do' had been promised for his sake, not for its own;
not for any gain to her soul, but in the earnest hope that it might
profit his, by God's mercy. Since he was not dead, but alive, the
chief purpose of it died with his return to life. She did not love the
work she had promised to do more than she loved him; that was not
true, and never had been. All had been for him--her vow, her work, and
her prayers. Heaven forbid, indeed, that she should now set him before
them; yet it was hard not to do so and there was only one possible
way; in a changed sense