“Believe me, my dear sisters, if you serve him well you will not
     find better parents than those the Divine Master sends you.  I know
     that it is even so.”

“What beauty there is in her sternness,” Evelyn thought.

“I repeat that those whose trend is toward worldly things and who do not make progress in virtue, shall leave this monastery; should she persist in remaining a nun let her enter another convent; for if she doesn’t she will see what will happen to her.  Nor must she complain about me; nor accuse me of not having make known to her the practical life of the monastery I founded.  If there is an earthly paradise it is in this house, but only for souls who desire nothing but to please God, who have no thought for themselves; for these the life here is infinitely agreeable.”

This passage is one of the very few in which appears the wise, practical woman, the founder of an order and of many monasteries, who lived side by side in the same body, the constant associate of the lyrical saint.  Evelyn tried to picture her to herself, and two pictures alternated in her thoughts.  She saw deep, eager, passionate eyes, and a frail, exhausted body borne along easily by the soul, and doing the work of the unconquerable soul.  In the second picture, there were the same consuming eyes, the same wasted body, but the expression was quite different.  The saint’s manner was the liveliest, happiest manner, and Evelyn thought of the privilege of such companionship, and she envied those who had walked with her, hearing her speak.

The little pond at her feet was full of fair reflections of the sky and trees, and the idea of convent life lay on the pages of the book even as fair.  In itself it was disparate and vague, but on the pages of the book it floated clear and distinct.  She asked if any of the Wimbledon nuns lived a life of that intense inward rapture which St. Teresa deemed essential if a sister were to be allowed to remain in the convent of St. Joseph at Avila, and the coincidence of the names gave her pause.  This convent’s patron saint was St. Joseph, and she sought for some resemblance between the Reverend Mother and St. Teresa.  She wondered if she, Evelyn, were a nun, towards which of the nuns would her personal sympathies incline:  would she love better Sister Veronica or Sister Mary John?  It might be Mother Mary Hilda.  It would be one of the three.  There was not one among the others likely to interest her in the least.  She tried to imagine this friendship:  it assumed a vague shape and then dissolved in the distance.  But would the Reverend Mother tolerate this friendship, or would it be promptly cut down to the root according to the advice of St. Teresa?