h. But she did not even open the door, and Evelyn lay looking
through the strange room, unable to face the discomfort of a small basin
of cold water. She would have to do her hair herself, and there was no
toilette table. The convent seemed suddenly a place to flee from; she
hadn't realised that it would be like this.... But it would never do for
her to miss Mass, and she sat on the edge of the bed, unable to think of
any solution of her difficulties. The only glass in the room was about a
foot square; it had been placed on the chest of drawers, and nothing
seemed to Evelyn more inefficient than this wretched glass. Its very
position on the top of the chest of drawers was vexatious. She could not
even get it into the proper angle, and when she removed the piece of
paper that held it in position, it swung round and its back confronted
her. That morning it seemed as if she could not dress herself. Her hair
had curled itself into many a knot; she nearly broke the comb, and her
hand dropped by her side, and then she laughed outright, having caught
sight of some part of her dejection. As she hooked on her skirt she
reflected on the necessity of not leaving bottles of scent nor too many
sponges for the observation of the nuns; and the nightgown she had
brought was certainly not a conventual garment.

She hurried downstairs, and was just in time to see the nuns coming into
church. They came in by a side door, walking two by two, and Evelyn was
again struck by the beauty and mystery of this grey procession. She had
seen on the stage the outward show of men who had renounced the
world--the pilgrims in "Tannhaeuser," the knights in "Parsifal," but this
was no outward show. The women she was now witnessing had renounced the
world; the life she was witnessing was the life they lived from hour to
hour, from day to day, from year to year. She had included lovers amid
their renunciations; such inclusion was ridiculous, for of such sins as
hers they had not even dreamed. To pass through life without knowing
life! To have renounced, to have refused love, friends, art, everything,
dinner-parties, conversations, all the distractions which we believe
make life endurable, to have refused these things from the
beginning--not even to have been tempted to taste, not even to have
desired to put life to the test of a fugitive personal experience, but
to have divined from the first, by instinct, by the grace of God, the
worthlessness of life--that