Mildred’s eyes were still closed, but her eyelids were fluttering and she was breathing audibly.

“How well I remember it!  The sweet summer morning and the snow-white sunshine, and the white flowers and the white chapel of the Little Sisters, and then you dressed as a bride in your white gown and long white veil.  I cried all through the ceremony.  And if my father had not come for me then, perhaps I should have been a nun like you now.”

Mildred’s lips were moving.  I was sure she was praying to our Lady for strength to resist my pleading, yet that only made me plead the harder.

“But God knows best what our hearts are made for,” I said.  “He knows that mine was made for love.  And though you may not think it I know God knows that he who is away is my real husband—­not the one they married me to.  You will not separate us, will you?  All our happiness—­his and mine—­is in your hands.  You will save us, will you not?”

Some time passed before Mildred spoke.  It may have been only a few moments, but to me it seemed like an eternity.  I did not know then that Mildred was reluctant to extinguish the last spark of hope in me.  At length she said: 

“Mary, you don’t know what you are asking me to do.  When I took my vows I promised to speak the truth under all circumstances, no matter what the consequences, as surely as I should answer to God at the great Day of Judgment.  Yet you wish me to lie.  How can I?  How can I?  Remember my vows, my duty.”

I think the next few minutes must have been the most evil of all my life.  When I saw, or thought I saw, that, though one word would save me, one little word, Mildred intended to give me away to the men downstairs, I leapt to my feet and burst out on her with the bitterest reproaches.

“You religious women are always talking about your duty,” I cried.  “You never think about love.  Love is kind and merciful; but no, duty, always duty!  Love indeed!  What do you cold creatures out of the convent, with your crosses and rosaries, know about love—­real love—­the blazing fire in a woman’s heart when she loves somebody so much that she would give her heart’s blood for him—­yes, and her soul itself if need be.”

What else I said I cannot remember, for I did not know what I was doing until I found myself looking out of the window and panting for breath.

Then I became aware that Mildred was making no reply to my reproaches, and looking over my shoulder I saw that she was still sitting in my chair with both her hands covering her face and the tears trickling through her fingers on to the linen of her habit.

That conquered me in a moment.

I was seized with such remorse that I wished to throw my arms about her neck and kiss her.  I dared not do that, now, but I knelt by her side again and asked her to forgive me.

“Forgive me, sister,” I said.  “I see now that God has brought us to this pass and there is no way out of it.  You must do what you think is right.  I shall always know you couldn’t have done otherwise. He will know too.  And if it must be that disgrace is to fall on him through me . . . and that when he comes home he will find. . . .”