e severe pictures on the walls. She
recognised at once the engraving of Leonardo's "Last Supper" which hung
over the solid marble chimney piece a little above the statue of Our
Lady of Lourdes and the two blue vases, and also the pale, distempered
walls, and the coloured, smiling portrait of the Pope, and a full-length
photograph of Cardinal Manning, signed in his own clear, neat
handwriting.

Evelyn and the priests, still undecided where they should sit, looked at
the little horsehair sofa. Monsignor brought forward for her one of the
six high, straight-backed chairs, and they sat at the circular table
laid out with severe books; a volume of the _Lives of the Saints_ lay
under her hand, and she glanced at a little box for contributions. She
looked at the priests and then round the room, striving to penetrate the
meaning which it vaguely conveyed to her--an indescribable air of
scrupulous neatness and cleanliness, a sense of virginal dulness. But
suddenly a startling sense of the incongruity came upon her, that she,
the opera-singer, Owen Asher's mistress, should be admitted into a
convent, should be received, the honoured guest of holy women. And she
got up, leaving the two priests to discuss the financial results of the
concert, and stood gazing out at the window. There was the rosery with
the lilac bushes shutting out the view of the green fields beyond; and
this was the portion of the garden given up to visitors and boarders.
She used to walk there during the retreat. Away to the right was the
big, sunny garden where the nuns went for their daily recreation. By
special permission she had once been allowed there; she remembered the
sloping lawns, the fringe of stately elms, and over them the view
westward of Richmond Park. She thought of the nuns walking under their
trees, half ghost-like, half sybil-like they used to seem in their grey
habits with their long grey veils falling picturesquely, their thoughts
fixed on an infinite life, and this life never seeming more to them than
a little passing shadow.

Evelyn returned slowly to the table. The priests were talking of the
convent choir; Monsignor turned to address a question to her, but before
he spoke, the door opened and two nuns entered, hardly of this world did
they seem in their long grey habits.

The Reverend Mother, a small, thin woman, with eager eyes and a nervous,
intimate manner, hastened forward. Evelyn felt that the Reverend Mother
could not be less t