llable might carry weight, he read it aloud.

As the gracious and kindly words fell upon the Prioress's ear,
commanding that no undue pressure should be brought to bear upon her,
and insisting that it must be entirely by her own wish, if she resigned
her office and availed herself of this dispensation from her vows, she
felt humbled to the dust at thought of her own violence, and of the
injustice of her angry words.

Her weeping became so heartbroken, that the Bishop again laid his left
hand, with kindly comforting touch, upon her bowed head.

As he read the Pope's most particular injunctions as to the manner in
which she must leave the Nunnery and take her place in the world once
more, so as to prevent any public scandal, she fell silent from sheer
astonishment, holding her breath to listen to the final clause
empowering the Bishop to announce within the Convent, when her absence
became known, that she had been moved on by him, secretly, with the
knowledge and approval of the Pope, to a place where she was required
for higher service.

"Higher service," said the Prioress, her face still hidden. "_Higher_
service? Can it be that the Holy Father really speaks of the return to
earthly love and marriage, the pleasures of the world, and the joys of
home life, as 'higher service'?"

The grief, the utter disillusion, the dismayed question in her tone,
moved the Bishop to compunction.

"Mine was the phrase, to begin with, my daughter," he admitted. "I
used it to the Holy Father, and I confess that, in using it, I did mean
to convey that which, as you well know. I have long believed, that
wifehood and motherhood, if worthily performed, may rank higher in the
Divine regard than vows of celibacy. But, in adopting the expression,
the Holy Father, we may rest assured, had no thought of undervaluing
the monastic life, or the high position within it to which you have
attained. I should rather take it that he was merely accepting my
assurance that the new vocation to which you were called would, in your
particular case, be higher service."

The Prioress, lifting her head, looked long into the Bishop's face,
without making reply.

Her eyes were drowned in tears; dark shadows lay beneath them. Yet the
light of a high resolve, unconquerable within her, shone through this
veil of sorrow, as when the sun, behind it, breaks through the mist,
victorious, chasing by its clear beams the baffling fog.

Seeing that look, the Bi