ositively painful. Sister Giovanna was honest with herself and was
broad-minded enough to be fair; her memory had always been very good,
she could recall nearly every word of the long interview, and she
accused herself of having been weak twice, namely, when she had
admitted that she was tempted, and when she had raised the revolver
and Giovanni had thrown himself against it. The danger had been great
at that moment, she knew, for she had felt that her mind was losing
its balance. But she had not wished to kill him, even for a moment,
though a terrifying conviction that her finger was going to pull the
trigger in spite of her had taken away her breath. Looking back, she
thought it must have been the sensation some people have at the edge
of a precipice, when they feel an insane impulse to jump off, without
having the slightest wish to destroy themselves. If a man affected in
this way should lose his head and leap to destruction, his act would
assuredly not be suicide. The nun knew it very well, and she was
equally sure that if she had been startled into pulling the trigger,
and had killed the man she had loved so well, it would not have been
homicide, whatever the law might have called it. But the consequences
would have been frightful, and the danger had been real. She could be
thankful for her good nerves, since nothing had happened, that was
all. Where she had done wrong had been in taking up the weapon, great
as the provocation to self-defence had been.

Morally speaking, and apart from the possible fatal result, her main
fault lay in having confessed to Giovanni that she was really tempted
to ask release from her vows. Now that he was not near, no such
temptation assailed her, but there had been a time when to resist it
had seemed the greatest sacrifice that any human being could make. She
could only draw one conclusion from this fact, but it was a grave one:
in spite of her past life, her vows and her heartfelt faith, she was
not free from material and earthly passion. Innocence is one thing,
ignorance is another, and a trained nurse of twenty-five cannot and
should not be as ignorant as a child, whether she be a nun or a lay
woman. Sister Giovanna knew what she had felt: it had been the thrill
of an awakened sense, not the vibration of a heartfelt sympathy; it
belonged neither to the immortal spirit nor to the kingdom of the
mind, but to the dying body. Temptation is not sin, but it is wrong to
expose oneself to