gazed sorrowfully at her with her large eyes as if beseeching
forgiveness then, as she saw her aunt look at her with pained surprise,
again threw herself on her breast.

Instead of being protectingly embraced by the elder woman, the young
girl clasped her closely to her heart, kissed and patted her with
caressing love, and with the winning charm peculiar to her besought
her forgiveness if she denied herself and her that which she had long
desired as the fairest and noblest goal.

When the abbess interrupted her to represent what awaited her in the
world and in the convent, Eva listened, nestling closely to her side
until she had finished, then sighing as deeply as if her own resolve
caused her the keenest suffering, threw her head back, exclaiming,
"Yet, in spite of everything, I cannot, must not enter the convent
now." Clasping the abbess's hand, she explained what prevented her from
fulfilling the wish of her childhood's guide, which had so long been
her own, extolling with warm, sincere gratitude the quiet happiness and
sweet anticipations enjoyed with her beloved nuns ere love had conquered
her.

During the recent days of sorrow she had again sought the path to
her saints and found the greatest solace in prayer; but whenever she
uplifted her heart to the Saviour, whose bride she had once so fervently
vowed to become, the Redeemer had indeed appeared as usual before
the eyes of her soul, but he resembled in form and features Sir Heinz
Schorlin, and, instead of turning her away from the world to divine
love, she had surrendered herself completely to earthly affection.
Prayer had become sin. The saint's song:

"O Love, Love's reign announcing,
Why dost thou wound me so?
Into thy fiercest flames I fling
My heart, my life below."

no longer invited her to give herself up to be fused into divine love,
but merely rendered the need of her own soul clearer, and expressed in
words the yearning of her heart for her lover.

Here her aunt interrupted her with the assurance that all this--she had
had the same experience when, renouncing the love of the noblest and
best of men, she took the veil--would be different, wholly different,
when with St. Clare's aid she had again found the path on which she
had already once so nearly reached heaven. Even now she beheld in
imagination the day when Eva would look back upon the world she had left
as if it were a mere formless mass of cloud