“Then I will go somewhere else.  But I do not understand you.  You always wanted me to go into religion.”

Sor Teresa held up one hand and cut short her speech.  For the habit of obedience is so strong that clear-headed men will deliberately go to their death rather than relinquish it.  The gesture was known to Juanita.  It was dreaded in the school.

“Think—­” said Sor Teresa.  “Think before you say that.”

“Well,” argued Juanita, “if you did not urge me in words, you used every means in your power to induce me to take the veil—­to make it impossible for me to do anything else.”

“Think!” urged Sor Teresa.  “Think again.  Do not include me in such generalities without thinking.”

Juanita paused.  She ran back in her mind over a hundred incidents of school life, remembered, as such are, with photographic accuracy.

“Well,” she admitted at length.  “You did your best to make me hate it—­at all events.”

“Ah!” said Sor Teresa, with a slow smile.

“Then you did not want me to go into religion—­” Juanita came a step nearer and peered into Sor Teresa’s face.  She might as well have sought an answer in a face of stone.

“Answer me,” she said impatiently.

“All are not suited for the religious life,” answered the Sister Superior after the manner of her teaching.  “I have known many such, and I have seen much sorrow arising from a mistaken sense of duty.  I have heard of lives wrecked by it—­I have known of two.”

Juanita who had moved away impatiently, now turned and looked at Sor Teresa.  The gloom of evening was gathering in the little bare room.  The stillness of the convent was oppressive.

“Were you suited to the religious life?” asked the girl suddenly.

But Sor Teresa made no answer.

Juanita sat suddenly down.  Her movements were quick and impulsive still, as they had been when she was a schoolgirl.  When she had arrived at the convent she had felt hungry and tired.  The feelings came back to her with renewed intensity now.  She was sick at heart.  The gray twilight within these walls was like the gloom of a hopeless life.

“I wonder who the other was,” she said, half to herself.  For the world was opening out before her like a great book hitherto closed.  The lives of men and women had gained depth and meaning in a flash of thought.

She rose and impulsively kissed Sor Teresa.

“I used to be afraid of you,” she said, with a laugh which seemed to surprise her, as if the voice that had spoken was not her own.  Then she sat down again.  It was almost dark in the room now, and the window glimmered a forlorn gray.

“I am so hungry and tired,” said Juanita in rather a faint voice, “but I am glad I came.  I could not stay in Torre Garda another hour.  Marcos married me for my money.  The money was wanted for political purposes.  They could not get it without me—­so I was thrown in.”