Angela, an alert young woman, whose walk still retained a dancing movement, whose face, white like white flowers and lit with laughing eyes, set Evelyn wondering what strange turn of mind should have induced her to enter a convent.  Locks of soft golden hair escaped from her hood, intended to grow into long tresses, but she had allowed her hair to be cut.  An ideal young mother, she seemed to Evelyn to be; and the thought of motherhood was put into Evelyn’s mind by the story Angela was telling, for her counterpart had been drowned in Noah’s deluge when he was four years old.

“But he is a dear little fellow, and he creeps into my bed, and lies in my arms; his hair is all curls, and he told me the story of his drowning, how it happened five thousand years ago.  He was carried away in his cot by the flood, and had floated away, seeing the tops of trees, until a great brown bear, weary of swimming, laid hold of the cot and overturned it.”

Veronica, who had heard Nicodemus’s description of the harrowing of hell many times, returned to them, a bunch of wild flowers in her hand.

“Are not these Bright Eyes beautiful?  They remind me of the eyes of my baby; his eyes are as blue as these.”  And she looked into the little blue flower.  “Sister Teresa hasn’t yet met a counterpart, but that is only because she doesn’t wish for it; one must pray and meditate, otherwise one doesn’t get one.”  And Evelyn learned how Rufina had waited a long time for her counterpart.  One day an extraordinary fluttering began in her breast, and she heard the being telling her not to forget to warn the doctor that he had grown a little taller, and had come now to reach the end of toes and fingers.  Evelyn wanted to understand what that meant, but Angela could not tell her, she could only repeat what Rufina had told her; and a look of reproval came into Veronica’s face when Angela said that when Rufina was asked what her counterpart was like she said that it was like having something inside one, and that lately he seemed to be much in search of her mouth and tongue; and when she asked him what he was like he replied that he was all a kiss.”

“It really seems to me—­” A memory of her past life checked her from reproving the novices for their conversation; they were innocent girls, and though their language seemed strange they were innocent at heart, which was the principal thing, whereas she was not.  And the talk went on now about Sister Cecilia, who had been long praying for a counterpart, but whose prayers were not granted.

“She is so stupid; how could a counterpart care about her?  What could he say?” Angela whispered to Veronica, pressing the bunch of flowers which Veronica had given to her lips.

“Cecilia isn’t pretty.  But our counterparts don’t seek us for our beauty,” Veronica answered, Evelyn thought a little pedantically, “otherwise mine never would have found me.”  And the novices laughed.

The air was full of larks, some of them lost to view, so high were they; others, rising from the grass, sang as they rose.