e praying, "My sweet daughter, listen to me. Never become a poor
religious." She heaved a long sigh of regret, and said, "Our dress of
black and white tells others that we are creatures of strength and of
brightness. At our bidding all tears are dried, and all who suffer
come to us for consolation, but nobody thinks of our own suffering. We
are like women without faces." Then she spoke of the future. She
said, "I am going where the missionaries go. I shall live there in a
house full of terror. Before my eyes will pass unceasingly everything
that is hideous, everything that is ugly, everything that is bad." I
listened to her deep voice. There was a note of passion in it. It was
as though she were taking on to her own shoulders all the suffering of
the world. Her fingers loosed mine. She passed them over my cheeks,
and in a gentle voice, and sweet, she said, "The purity of your face
will always remain graven on my mind." Then she looked out, away and
past me, and added, "God has given us remembrance, and it is not in
anybody's power to take that away from us." She got up from the bench.
I went with her across the yard, and when Ox Eye had closed the heavy
gate behind her, I stood and listened to the echo of its closing.

That evening Sister Desiree-des-Anges came into the room later than
usual. She had been taking part in special prayer for Sister
Marie-Aimee, who was going away to nurse the lepers.

Winter came again. Sister Desiree-des-Anges had soon guessed my love
of reading, and she brought me all the books in the sisters' library,
one after the other. Most of the books were childish books, and I read
quickly, turning over several pages at a time. I preferred stories of
travel, and I used to read at night by the night-light. Sister
Desiree-des-Anges used to scold me when she woke up; but as soon as she
went to sleep I took up the book again. Little by little we became
great friends. The white curtain was no longer drawn between our beds
at night time. All sense of constraint had disappeared between us, and
all our thoughts were in common. She was cheerful and bright always.
The one thing that annoyed her in her life was her nun's costume. She
found it heavy and uncomfortable, and she used to say that it hurt her.
"When I dress," she said, "I always feel as though I were putting
myself into a house where it is always night." She was always glad to
get out of her dress in the evening, an