Out of a shrivelled face pale, deeply-set eyes looked at her, and it seemed that she could read therein the disappointment he felt that she was not remaining in the convent.  She was sorry she had disappointed him, for he had helped her; and she left him talking to Sister Winifred and wandered down the passage, not quite certain whether he doubted her strength to lead a chaste life in the world, or could she attribute that change of expression in his eyes to wounded vanity at finding that the living clay put into his hands was escaping from them unmoulded... by him?  Hard to say.  There was a fear in her heart!  Now was it that she might lack the force of character to leave the convent when the time came... after the Prioress’s death?  Life is but a ceaseless uprooting of oneself.  Sister Winifred might be elected....

“Who will have the strength to turn the convent into an active Order when I am gone?” the Prioress often asked Evelyn, who could only answer her that she hoped she would be with them for many a day yet.  “No, my dear, not for many months.  I am a very old woman.”  She questioned Evelyn regarding Mother Philippa’s administration; and Evelyn disguised from her the disorder that had come into the convent, not telling how the nuns spent a great deal of time visiting each other in their cells, how in the garden some walked on one side and some on the other, how the bitterest enmities had sprung up.  But, though she was not told these things, the Prioress knew her convent had fallen into decadence, and sometimes she said: 

“Well, I haven’t the strength to restore dignity to this Order; so it had better disappear, become an active Order.  But who among you will be able to reorganise it?  Mother Philippa—­what do you think, dear?”

“Mother Philippa is an excellent woman,” Evelyn answered; “but as an administrator—­”

“You don’t believe in her?”

“Only when she is guided by another, one superior to herself.”

“One who will see that the rule is maintained?”

Evelyn was thinking of Mother Hilda.

“Mother Hilda,” she said, “seems to me too quiet, too subtle, too retiring.”  And the Prioress agreed with her, saying under her breath: 

“She prefers to confine herself to the education of her novices.  So what is to be done?”

From Mother Hilda Evelyn’s thoughts went to Sister Mary John, and it seemed to her she never realised before the irreparable loss the convent had sustained.  But what was the good in reminding the Prioress of Sister Mary John?  No doubt, lying back there in her chair, the old mind was thinking of the nun she had lost, and who would have proved of such extraordinary service in the present circumstances.  While looking at the Prioress, thinking with her (for it is true the Prioress was thinking of Sister Mary John), Evelyn understood suddenly, in a single second, that if Sister Mary John had not left Sister Winifred would not have come forward with the project of a school, nor would there have been any schism.  But in spite of all her wisdom, the Prioress had not known, until this day, how dependent they were on Sister Mary John.  A great mistake had been made, but there was no use going into that now.