Her mind went back ten years, and she thought of Lady Isabel, and how much she had lamented her daughter's youthful angularity.

"If she could have seen this!" thought Alex. "But, of course, it only mattered for evening dress--she wouldn't have thought it mattered for a nun."

Instantly she began to cry again, although her head throbbed and her eyes burned and smarted. There was no need now to wonder if she looked tired. Accidentally one day, her hand to her face, she had felt the sort of deeply-hollowed pit that now lay underneath each eye, worn into a groove.

She had ceased to wonder whether life would ever offer anything but this mechanical round of blurred pain and misery, these incessant tears, when the Superior sent for her.

"What is the matter with you, Sister? They tell me you are always in tears. Are you ill?"

Alex shook her head dumbly.

"Sister, control yourself. You will be ill if you cry like that. Don't kneel, sit down."

The Superior's tone was very kind, and the note of sympathy shook Alex afresh.

"Tell me what it is. Don't be afraid."

"I want to leave the convent--I want to be released from my vows."

She had never meant to say it--she had never known that such a thought was in her mind, but the moment that the words were uttered, the first sense of relief that she had felt surged within her.

It was the remembrance of that rush of relief that enabled her, sobbing, to repeat the shameful recantation, in the face of the Superior's grave, pitiful urgings and a.s.surance that she did not know what she was saying.

After that--an appalling crisis that left her utterly exhausted and with no vestige of belief left in her own ultimate salvation--everything was changed.

She was treated as an invalid, and sent to lie down instead of joining the community at the hour of recreation, the Superior herself devoted almost an hour to her every day, and nearly all her work was taken away, so that she could walk alone round the big _verger_ and the enclosed garden, and read the carefully-selected Lives and Treatises that the Superior chose for her.

Gradually some sort of poise returned to her. She could control her tears, and drink the soups and _tisanes_ that were specially prepared and put before her, and as the year advanced, she could feel the first hint of Spring stirring in her exhaustion. She was devoid alike of apprehension and of hope.

No solution appeared to her conceivable, save possibly that of her own death, and she knew that none would be attempted until the return of the Superior-General from South America.

As this delayed, she became more and more convinced, in despite of all reason, of the immutable eternity of the present state of affairs.

It shocked her when one day the Superior said to her:

"You are to go to the Superior of the Jesuits' College in the parlour this afternoon. Do you remember, he preached the sermon for your Profession, and I think he has been here once or twice in the last year or two? He is a very wise and clever and holy man, and ought to help you. Besides, he is of your own nationality."

Alex remembered the tall, good-looking Irishman very well. He had once or twice visited the convent, and had always told amusing stories at recreation, and preached vigorous, inspiring sermons in the chapel, with more than a spice of originality to colour them.

The children adored him.

Alex wondered.

Perhaps Father Farrell, the clever and educated priest, would really see in some new aspect the problem that left her baffled and sick of soul and body.

She went into the parlour that afternoon trembling with mingled dread, and the first faint stirrings of hope that understanding and release from herself and her wickedness might yet be in store for her.

Father Farrell, big and broad-shouldered, with iron-grey, wavy hair and a strong, handsome face, turned from the window as she entered the room.

"Come in, Sister, come in. Sit down, won't you? They tell me ye've not been well--ye don't look it, ye don't look it!"

His voice, too, was big and bluff and hearty, full of decision, the voice of a man accustomed to the command of men.

He pushed a chair forward and motioned her, with a quick, imperious gesture that yet held kindness, to sit down.

He himself stood, towering over her, by the window.

"Well, now, what's all the trouble, Sister?"

There was the suspicion of a brogue in his cultivated tones.

Alex made a tremendous effort. She told herself that he could not help her unless she told him the truth.

She said, as she had said to the French Superior:

"I am very unhappy--I want to be released from my vows as a nun."

The priest gave her one very quick, penetrating look, and his thick eyebrows went up into his hair for an instant, but he did not speak.

"I don't think I have ever had any--any real vocation," said Alex, whitening from the effort of an admission that she knew he must regard as degrading.

"And how long have ye thought ye had no real vocation?"

There was the slightest possible discernible tinge of kindly derision in the inquiry.

It gave the final touch to her disconcertment.

"I don't know."

She felt the folly of her reply even before the priest's laugh, tinged with a sort of vexed contempt, rang through the room.

"Now, me dear child, this is perfect nonsense, let me tell ye. Did ye ever hear the like of such folly? No real vocation, and here ye've been a professed religious for--how long is it?"

"Nearly four years since I was finally professed, but--"

"There's no _but_ about it, Sister. A vow made to Our Blessed Lord, I'd have ye know, is not like an old glove, to be thrown away when ye think ye're tired of it. No, no, Sister, that'll not be the way of it. Ye'll get over this, me dear child, with a little faith and perseverance. It's just a temptation, that ye've perhaps been giving way to, owing to fatigue and ill health. Ye feel it's all too hard for ye, is that it?"

"No," said Alex frantically, "that's not it. It's nothing like that.

It's that I can't bear this way of living any longer. I want a home, and to be allowed to care for people, and to have friends again--I _can't_ live by myself."

She knew that she had voiced the truth as she knew it, and covered her face with her hands in dread lest it might fail to reach his perceptions.

She heard a change in Father Farrell's voice when next he spoke.

"Ye'd better tell me the whole tale, Sister. Who is it ye want to go back to in the world?"

She looked up, bewildered.