“To you, of course, it would sound absurd, it does to me too, but it was a little change, it was the only thing I could think of.  We have some pieces written for two voices, but I can hardly get them sung.  I have to teach the sisters the parts separately.  Till they know them by heart, I can’t trust them.  It is impossible sometimes not to lose one’s temper.  If we had a few good voices, people would come to hear them, the convent would be spoken about, and some charitable people would come forward and pay off our mortgages.  I’ve lain awake at night thinking of it; the Reverend Mother agrees with me.  But in the way of voices we’ve been as unlucky as we could well be.  I’ve been here eight years—­there was one, but she died six years ago of consumption.  It is heartbreaking.  I play the organ, I beat the time, and, as I said to them the other day, ’There are five of you, and I’m the only one that sings.’”

Sister Mary John asked Evelyn if she composed.  Evelyn told her that she did not compose, and remembering Owen’s compositions, she hoped that Sister Mary John had not an “O Salutaris” in manuscript.

“Let me look through the music; we are talking of other things instead of looking.”

“So we are....  Let us look.”  At the bottom of a heap, Sister Mary John found Cherubini’s “Ave Maria.”

“Could you sing this?  It is a beautiful piece of music.”

Evelyn read it over.

“Yes,” she said, “I can sing it, but it wants careful playing; the end is a sort of little duet between the voice and the organ.  If you don’t follow me exactly, the effect will be like this,” and she showed what it would be on the mute keyboard.

“You haven’t confidence in my playing.”

“Every confidence, Sister Mary John, but remember I don’t know the piece, and it is not easy.  I think we had better try it over together.”

“I should like to very much, but you will not sing with all your voice?”

“No, we’ll just run through it....”

The nun followed in a sort of ecstasy, and when they came to what Evelyn had called the duet, she played the beautiful antiphonal music looking up at the singer.  The second time Evelyn was surer of herself, and she let her voice flow out a little in suave vocalisation, so that she might judge of the effect.

“I told you that I had never heard anyone sing before.  If you were one of us!”

Evelyn laughed, and then, catching sight of the nun’s eyes fixed very intently upon her, she spoke of the beauty of the “Ave Maria,” and was surprised that she did not know anything of Cherubini’s.

“Gracious, how the time has gone!  That is the first bell for vespers.”

She hurried away, forgetting all about Evelyn, leaving her to find her way back to her room as best she could.  But Evelyn found Sister Mary John waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.  She had come back for her, she had just remembered her, and Sister Mary John apologised for her absence of mind, and seemed distressed at her apparent rudeness.  They walked a little way together, and the nun explained that it was not her fault; her absence of mind was an inheritance from her father.  Everything she had she had inherited from him—­“my love of music and my absence of mind.”