t eyes alert, small
clinging feet, a pair of folded wings. Yet do the frailest threads of
love and trust, make a safer rope to which to cling when shipwreck
threatens the heart, than the iron chains of obligation and duty.

Presently a sordid doubt seized upon Mother Sub-Prioress. Had the
robin finished the cheese, and come to her thus, merely to ask for more?

Very slowly she ventured to turn her head, until the stone coping at
her elbow came into her range of vision.

Then a glow of pride and happiness warmed her heart. Three--four--five
fragments remained! Not for greed or favour had this little wild thing
of his own free will drawn near.

For what, then? . . .

Mother Sub-Prioress whispered the answer; and as she whispered it, her
tears fell afresh; but now they were tears without bitterness; a
healing fount seemed to well up within her softening heart.

For love? Yea, verily! For love of her, those small brown wings had
brought him near, those bright eyes were unafraid.

"For love of me," she whispered. "For love of me."

When at length he chirped and flew, she still sat motionless, listening
as he sang his evening song high up in the pieman's tree.

Then she rose and swept the untouched fragments back into the wallet.
There was triumph in the action.

"For love!" she said. "Not of that which I brought and gave, but of
that which he thought me to be."

Slowly she left the cloister, moving, with bent head, until she reached
the open door of the empty chamber which had been the Reverend Mother's.

Before long this chamber would be hers. At noon she had received word
from the Bishop that it was his intention to appoint her to be
Prioress, for the years which yet remained of the Reverend Mother's
term of office.

She had experienced a sinister pleasure in being thus promoted to this
high office by the Bishop, owing to the certainty that had the usual
election by ballot taken place, her name would not have been inscribed
by a single member of the Community.

Yet now, in this strangely softened mood, she began wistfully to desire
that there might be looks of pleasure and satisfaction on at least a
few faces, when the announcement should be made on the morrow.

Mother Sub-Prioress passed into the cell, and closed the door.

She was drawn, by the glow of the sunset, to the oriel window. But on
her way thither she found herself unexpectedly arrested before the
marble group of the Virgin and Chil