To think that at your age, with your beauty, you have been able to go through such severe tests in order to overcome sin!"

"Why did you send for me?" Helene asked.

"Because, dear, we have decided to make a blue altar-cloth embroidered with gold and silk for your convent. Without your advice we do not know how to set about it; it is impossible for us to choose the design and the colours."

The table was already covered with the velvet cloth in question which reached down to the ground; on it were lying skeins of silk, fringes and gold thread. As soon as Helene had taken her seat the ladies began an earnest discussion on the question whether they should embroider the flowers flame-colour, the stalks white, the leaves red, and at the top in gold a border of moss-roses.

"But would it look natural?" said the nun.

"Then what are we to do?" answered the "benefactress" in an agitated way. "Enlighten us, dear Sister; without you we are in darkness."

When the consultation was over, Sacha, who had waited impatiently, approached Helene, took her arm, and led her to the drawing-room.

"I have been to your church to-day," she said. "I have looked for you everywhere without seeing you."

"I generally stand on the right in a corner."

"In the shadow?"

"Yes; one feels more comfortable out of observation."

"It is a pity; I was looking forward so much to meeting you again, and did not succeed."

"Why regret it?"

"Ah well! As a devotee you are simply superb; one would say you had stepped out of the frame of a holy picture. And how they sing at your convent! You have a magnificent voice."

"Who says so?"

"My aunt in the first place. At school it seems that you already held every one under a spell."

"Your aunt is too kind."

"Not at all; she is only just. But tell me why do you not take part in the convent choirs?"

"I do not wish to," said Helene, and a shadow pa.s.sed over her face.

"Pardon me," murmured Sacha, taking her hand. "I have perhaps vexed you; I am so foolish."

"Not at all," answered Helene. "It is not that. But you see, I ought not to sing. Doubtless, you do not understand me. Anna Petrovna declares in her kindness that I have overcome all sins, but it is not so. A nun ought to seek before all things to forget the world where she has lived.

It ought not to attract her any more. No one knows anything of our struggles and our mental distresses. If I recommenced to sing, the past would rise again at once. Ah! I have experienced it already; one day I was singing a church chant in my room; all the past came up in my heart, and I nearly choked. That which I had fled from, that which I believed dead and buried, returned. You see a spiritual victory is not won so easily. Till one is 'dead to the world' one has many trials to pa.s.s through. It is only outsiders who imagine that peace reigns in a convent. If people could glance into our souls, they would see troubles and storms at the bottom of each. But these are only words! Come and see me, won't you?"

"Yes, certainly!" answered Sacha, stretching out her hand.

"I love you much, Sacha; you are honest. Au revoir. G.o.d be with you."

"Where are you going?" exclaimed the general's wife. "What! Without taking tea. I won't let you go. After tea they will put up for you a basket of preserves to take to the abbess, that good soul. She prefers quince-preserve. As for you, I don't offer you any; you have renounced all these luxuries; you no longer belong to this world!"

And once more her cheeks began to quiver and her green eyes grew moist.

"How charming you were at school! Tall, well-shaped, like a figure in Dresden china. Do you ever remember the school, Sister Helene?"

"Yes, of course," said Helene, with an abstracted air, only half-attending to her.

"I remember they had brought you from far away--the Caucasus, wasn't it?

They had written to me, I remember."

The nun bent her head in order to hide her disturbance of mind. When she raised it again, she had grown still paler, and her sad eyes showed physical pain controlled with difficulty. But the general's wife, who never paused to notice anything, did not guess at her trouble. She had risen, and stuttering very fast, said, "This evening we will give you a musical treat. I know you love music, Helene, and that is not a sin. I think there was a saint--what was her name?"

"Saint Cecilia," said the governess.

"Yes, precisely. She was a musician, and yet she has been canonized; you will find it in books."

Helene remained. She felt an irresistible desire to hear music--something besides the human voice or the voice of her heart.

"Is it you who will play?" she said, approaching Sacha.

"Yes; tell me what you prefer; I only warn you that I don't play anything very serious."

"Play something that I have not yet heard; all that calls up a.s.sociations of the past makes me feel poorly. During the four years that I have been at the convent you must have learnt many things which I don't know. You know, perhaps, Beethoven's Sonata 'Quasi una fantasia.'"

"Certainly. Would you like to hear it? 'It is an old piece that is always new,' our musical professor used to say."

"Yes. To-day I feel drawn to it, though I know it will make me suffer."

"Do you know that it is a little alarming to see you as a nun? Why should it be? Our family has been always given to religion; my grandmother entered a convent at the close of her days; and my mother spent her days in visiting the Holy Places."

Sacha went to the piano and the general's wife came and sat by Helene.

She took her hands and said to her in a sentimental tone, "Do you remember how often we used to play duets at school?"

"We must confess that we played very badly," answered Helene with a smile.

"Yes, but the recollection is a delightful one. Do you remember the venerable Father who used to come to listen to us? Do you know I was quite in love with him! But pardon me; I forgot that before you.... Ah, you are quite removed from all that to-day, happy woman!"

"But are not you happy?"

"Non. Life is not what it appeared to us through the rose-coloured curtains of the school. I do not complain of my husband, but he is quite incapable of letting himself go or of becoming enthusiastic."

For a moment or two she shed tears, which she wiped away as Sacha struck her first notes.

Helene listened as though in a trance. G.o.d only knew how much the music recalled to her of that past which she thought had been blotted out. She saw once more her country, whose soil she would never tread again; she heard the murmurs of the plane-trees, the low warbling of the brooks; a more brilliant sun glowed in a deeper sky; she closed her eyes and would have liked to withdraw into herself, and see no more of her surroundings. The unutterable yearning and burning pa.s.sion of the sonata struck painfully and without cessation on her suffering heart. For a long time she had believed that a day would come when the old story which she had confided to no one would be finally forgotten, when she would be able to look at her past with the same indifference with which one contemplates the mists of autumn or the snows of winter; then she would return to her own people content and serene; they would receive her with joy, not guessing what she had sacrificed for them. To-day, alas! she understood that it would be vain to seek to bury that past; it would always rise again as vivid and sad as ever. No, she would never be able to see her country again. Moreover time, solitude and mental sufferings would not be long in putting an end to her physical life. A few more years, and she would rest in her coffin with a visage as immovable as that of the Sister dead yesterday in the convent, who also had known suffering. But those happy people down there, happy in the country she loved so well, did they still remember her? Perhaps they had forgotten her or thought her already dead.

Under the stress of these thoughts her heavy black garb became insupportable, and her head-dress weighed upon her like lead. She rose suddenly, before the sonata was finished.

"I will see you to-morrow," said the general's wife without attempting to detain her; "the carriage is there. This large packet is for the abbess, and the one wrapped up in a newspaper is for you."

"For me?" asked Helene in a reproachful tone. "You know that I do not like...."

"Well, give it from me to poor Olia."