Evelyn and the priests, still undecided where they should sit, looked at the little horsehair sofa.  Monsignor brought forward for her one of the six high, straight-backed chairs, and they sat at the circular table laid out with severe books; a volume of the Lives of the Saints lay under her hand, and she glanced at a little box for contributions.  She looked at the priests and then round the room, striving to penetrate the meaning which it vaguely conveyed to her—­an indescribable air of scrupulous neatness and cleanliness, a sense of virginal dulness.  But suddenly a startling sense of the incongruity came upon her, that she, the opera-singer, Owen Asher’s mistress, should be admitted into a convent, should be received, the honoured guest of holy women.  And she got up, leaving the two priests to discuss the financial results of the concert, and stood gazing out at the window.  There was the rosery with the lilac bushes shutting out the view of the green fields beyond; and this was the portion of the garden given up to visitors and boarders.  She used to walk there during the retreat.  Away to the right was the big, sunny garden where the nuns went for their daily recreation.  By special permission she had once been allowed there; she remembered the sloping lawns, the fringe of stately elms, and over them the view westward of Richmond Park.  She thought of the nuns walking under their trees, half ghost-like, half sybil-like they used to seem in their grey habits with their long grey veils falling picturesquely, their thoughts fixed on an infinite life, and this life never seeming more to them than a little passing shadow.

Evelyn returned slowly to the table.  The priests were talking of the convent choir; Monsignor turned to address a question to her, but before he spoke, the door opened and two nuns entered, hardly of this world did they seem in their long grey habits.

The Reverend Mother, a small, thin woman, with eager eyes and a nervous, intimate manner, hastened forward.  Evelyn felt that the Reverend Mother could not be less than sixty, yet she did not think of her as an old woman.  Between her rapid utterances an expression of sadness came upon her face, instilled through the bright eyes, and Evelyn contrasted her with Mother Philippa, the sub-prioress.  Even the touch of these women’s hands was different.  There was a nervous emotion in the Reverend Mother’s hand.  Mother Philippa’s hand when it touched Evelyn’s expressed somehow a simpler humanity.

She was a short, rather stout, homely-faced Englishwoman, about thirty-eight or forty, such a woman as is met daily on the croquet lawns in our suburbs, probably one of three plain sisters, and never could have doubted her vocation.

“I cannot tell you how grateful we are, Miss Innes, for what you have done for us.  Monsignor will have told you of the straits we are in....  But you are an old friend, I understand of our convent.  Mother Philippa, our sub-prioress, tells me you made a retreat here seven or eight years ago.”