be charged to look after him, and he should not be allowed to overwork himself; but it will be difficult to prevent this.  The most we can hope for is that he shall get his meals regularly, and that the food be of good quality and properly cooked.  The food here is not very good, nor very plentiful; to feel always a little hungry is certainly trying, and the doctor has spoken to the Prioress on the subject, insisting that nourishing food is necessary to those suffering from nervous breakdown, and healthy exercise; of healthy exercise there is plenty, for the nuns dig their own garden; so I am a reformer in a small way, and I can assure you my reformation is appreciated by the nuns, who thank me for it; my singing at Benediction is better appreciated on a full than on an empty stomach, especially when it is the song that fills the stomach.  And it is my singing that enables Mother Philippa, who looks after the catering, to spend more money at the baker’s and the butcher’s.  There has been an improvement, too, in the cooking; a better watch is kept in the kitchen, and not only my health but the health of the entire community is improved.

“We are a little more joyous now than we were, and every day I seem to be better able to appreciate the happiness of living among people who share one’s ideas.  One cannot love those whose ideas are different, at least I cannot; a mental atmosphere suitable to our minds is as necessary as fresh air is to our lungs.  And I feel it a great privilege to be allowed to live among chaste women, no longer to feel sure of my own unworthiness, no longer; it is terrible to live always at war with oneself.  The eyes of the nuns and their voices exhale an atmosphere in which it seems to me my soul can rise, and very often as I walk in the garden with them I feel as if I were walking upon air.  Owen Asher used to think that intellectual conversation kindled the soul; so it does in a way; and great works of art enkindle the soul and exalt it; but there is another exaltation of soul which is not discoverable in the intellect, and I am not sure that it is not the greater:  the exaltation of which I speak is found in obedience, in submission, yes, and in ignorance, in trying—­I will not say to lower oneself—­but in trying to bring oneself within the range of the humble intelligence and to understand it.  And there is plenty of opportunity for this in the convent.  To explain what I mean, and perhaps to pass away the tedium of an afternoon which seems long drawn out, I will put down here for you, Monsignor, the conversation, as much as I can remember of it, which introduced me to the inhabitants of the novitiate.

“When Mother Hilda recited the Litany of Our Lady, and we had risen to our feet, she said: 

“’Now, Evelyn, you must be introduced to your sisters—­Sister Barbara I think you have met, as she sings in the choir.  This is Sister Angela; this tall maypole is Sister Winifred, and this little being here is Sister Jerome, who was the youngest till you came.  Aren’t you pleased, Jerome, to have one younger than yourself?’ The novices said, ‘How do you do?’ and looked shy and awkward for a minute, and then they forgot me in their anxiety to know whether recreation was to be spent indoors or out.