To remember this experience gave her courage.  For she could not doubt that the intention of so special a favour was to convince her that she would not be lacking in courage when the time came to deny herself to Owen Asher.  At the same time she was troubled, and she feared that she was not quite sincere with herself.  She would easily resist him now; but in six months’ time, in a year?  Besides, she would meet other men; her thoughts even now went out towards one.  Ah! wretched weakness, abominable sin!  She was filled with contempt for herself, and yet at the bottom of her heart, like hope at the bottom of Pandora’s box, there was tolerance.  Her sins interested her; she would not be herself without them, and this being so, how could she hope to conquer herself?

Saturday and Sunday were monotonous and anxious days.  She had begun to wonder what was in the newspapers, and she had written to say that her carriage was to come to fetch her on Monday at three o’clock.

There had not been a gleam of light since early morning, only a gentle diffused twilight, and the foliage in the garden was almost human in its listlessness; a flat grey sky hung about the trees like a shroud.  Mother Philippa and Mother Mary Hilda were walking with her about the grass-grown drive.  They were waiting for the Reverend Mother, who had gone to fetch a medal for Evelyn.  She heard her chestnuts champing their bits ready to take her back to London, and she could not listen to Mother Philippa’s conversation, for she had been suddenly taken with a desire to say one last prayer in the chapel.  She must say one more prayer in the presence of the Sacrament.  So, excusing herself, she ran back, and, kneeling down, she buried her face in her hands.  At once all her thoughts hushed within her; it was like bees entering a hive to make honey.  Prayer came to her without difficulty, without even asking, and she enjoyed almost five minutes’ breathless adoration.

The three nuns kissed her, and as the Reverend Mother hung the medal round her neck, she told her that prayers would be constantly offered up for her preservation.  The chestnuts plunged at starting....  If she were killed now it would not matter.  But the horses soon settled down into their long swinging trot of ten miles an hour, and all the way to London she reflected.  The Reverend Mother had said that the prayers of nuns and monks were the wall and bastion tower which saved a sinful world from the wrath of God, and she thought of the fume of prayer ascending night and day from this convent as from a censer.  Men had always prayed, since the beginning of things men had prayed, and as Ulick had said, wisdom was not invented yesterday.  He agreed with the naturalistic philosophers that force is indestructible, only objecting that the naturalistic philosophers did not go far enough, the theory of the indestructibility of force being equally applicable to the spiritual world.  The world exists not