; some put
their hands over their hearts, and one put her hand in her hood, but
when she felt her hair shorn close to her scalp, drew it out again
sharply, as though she had touched red-hot iron, and cried, "O Jesu."

Sister Peronelle, a toothless old woman, began to speak in a cracked,
high voice, quickly and monotonously, as though she spoke in a dream.
Her eyes were wet and red, and her thin lips trembled. "God knows,"
she said, "I loved him; God knows it. But I bid all those who be maids
here, to be mindful of the woods. For they are green, but they are
deep and dark, and it is merry in the springtime with the thick turf
below and the good boughs above, all alone with your heart's
darling--all alone in the green wood. But God help me, he would not
stay any more than snow at Easter. I thought just now that I was back
with him in the woods. God keep all those that be maids from the green
woods."

The pretty Sister Ursula, who had only just finished her novitiate,
was as white as a sheet. Her breath came thickly and quick as though
she bore a great burden up hill. A great sigh made her comely
shoulders rise and fall. "Blessed Virgin," she cried. "Ah, ye ask too
much; I did not know; God help me, I did not know," and her grey eyes
filled with sudden tears, and she dropped her head on her arms on the
table, and sobbed aloud.

Then cried out Sister Katherine, who looked as old and dead as a twig
dropped from a tree of last autumn, and at whom the younger Sisters
privily mocked, "It is the wars, the wars, the cursed wars. I have
held his head in this lap, I tell you; I have kissed his soul into
mine. But now he lies dead, and his pretty limbs all dropped away into
earth. Holy Mother, have pity on me. I shall never kiss his sweet lips
again or look into his jolly eyes. My heart is broken long since. Holy
Mother! Holy Mother!"

"He must come oftener," said a plump Sister of thirty, with a little
nose turned up at the end, eyes black as sloes and lips round as a
plum. "I go to the orchard day after day, and gather my lap full of
apples. He is my darling. Why does he not come? I look for him every
time that I gather the ripe apples. He used to come; but that was in
the spring, and Our Lady knows that is long ago. Will it not be spring
again soon? I have gathered many ripe apples."

Sister Margarita rocked herself to and fro in her seat and crossed her
arms on her breast. She was singing quietly to herself.

"Lull