Suddenly began the plaint of the organ, and some half-dozen voices sang a hymn; and these pale, etiolated voices interested her.  It was not the clear, sexless voice of boys, these were women’s voices, out of which sex had faded like colour out of flowers; and these pale, deciduous voices wailing a poor, pathetic music, so weak and feeble that it was almost interesting through its very feebleness, interested Evelyn.  Tears trembled in her eyes, and she listened to the poor voices rising and falling, breaking forth spasmodically in the lamentable hymn.  “Desolate” and “forgotten” were the words that came up in her mind.

They were still kneeling altarwise; their profiles turned from her.  Outside of the choir stalls, on either side of the church, were two special stalls, and the Reverend Mother and the sub-prioress knelt apart.  Their backs were turned to Evelyn, and she noticed the fine delicate shoulders of the Reverend Mother, and the heavy figure of Mother Philippa.  “Even in their backs they are like themselves,” she thought.  She smiled at her descriptive style, “like themselves,” and then, seeing that Mass had begun, she resolutely repressed all levity, and began her prayers.  She had not felt especially pious till that moment, and to rouse herself she remembered Monsignor’s words, “That at the height of her artistic career she should have been awakened to a sense of her own exceeding sinfulness was a miracle of his grace,” and she felt that the devotion of her whole life to his service would not be a sufficient return for what he had done for her.  But in spite of her efforts she followed the sacrifice of the Mass in her normal consciousness until the bell rang for the Elevation.  When the priest raised the Host she was conscious of the Real Presence.  She raised her eyes a little, and the bent figures of the nuns, their veils hanging loose about them, contributed to her exaltation, and with a last effort, holding as it were her life in her hands, she asked pardon of God for her sins.

Then the pale, etiolated voices of the nuns, the wailing of these weak voices—­there were three altos, three sopranos—­began again.  They were singing an Agnus Dei, a simple little music nowise ugly, merely feeble, touchingly commonplace; they were singing in unison thirds and fifths, and the indifferent wailing of the voices contrasted with the firmness of the organist’s touch; and Evelyn knew that they had one musician among them.  She listened, touched by the plaintive voices, so feeble in the ears of man, but beautiful in God’s ears.  God heard beyond the mere notes; the music of the intention was what reached God’s ears.  The music of these poor voices was more favourable in his ears than her voice.  Months she had spent seeking the exact rhythm of a phrase intended to depict and to rouse a sinful desire.  Though the hymns were ugly—­and they were very ugly—­she would have done better to sing them; and she sought to press herself into the admission that art which