“Mother, I am nearly, forty, and my trials are at an end, or nearly.”

“Truly, a great trial.  I am old enough now, Teresa, to speak about it without shame.  A great trial, yet one is sorry when it is over.  And you still believe that a calamity would have befallen you?”

“And a great calamity nearly did befall me.”

They sat side by side, their eyes averted, knowing well that they had reached a point beyond which words could not carry them.

“We are always anxious to be understood, every one wants to be understood.  But why?  Of what use?”

“Mother, we must never speak on this subject again, for I love you very dearly, and it is a great pain to me to think that your death will set me free.”

“It seems wrong, Teresa, but I wouldn’t have you remain in the convent after me; you are not suited to it.  I knew it all the while, only I tried to keep you.  One is never free from temptation.  Now you know everything....  We have been here long enough.”

“We have only been here a few minutes,” Evelyn answered; “at least it has only seemed a few minutes to me.  The evening is so beautiful, the sky is so calm, the sound of the water so extraordinary in the stillness!  Listen to those birds, the chaffinch shrieking in that aspen, and the thrush singing all his little songs somewhere at the end of the garden.”

“And there is your bullfinch, dear.  He will remain in the convent to remind them of you when you have left.”

The bird whistled a stave of the Bird Music from “Siegfried,” and then came to their feet to pick.  Evelyn threw him some bread, and they wandered back to the novices, who had forgotten their differences, and were sitting under their tree with Mother Hilda discussing a subject of great interest to them.

“We haven’t seen them united before for a long time.”

“That odious Sister Winifred waiting for your death, thinking only of her school.”

“That is the way of the world, and we find the world everywhere, even in a convent.  Her idea comes before everything else.  Only you, Teresa, are good; you are sacrificing yourself to me; I hope it will not be for long.”

“But we said, Mother, we wouldn’t talk of that any more.  Now, what are the novices so eager about?”

Sister Agatha ran forward to tell them that it had been suddenly remembered that the thirtieth of the month would be Sister Bridget’s fortieth anniversary of her vows.

“Forty years she has been in the convent, and we are thinking that we might do something to commemorate the anniversary.”

“I should like to see her on an elephant, riding round the garden.  What a spree it would be!” said Sister Jerome.

The words were hardly out of her mouth when she regretted them, foreseeing allusions to elephants till the end of her days, for Sister Jerome often said foolish things, and was greatly quizzed for them.  But the absurdity of the proposal did not seem to strike any one; only the difficulty of procuring an elephant, with a man who would know how to manage the animal, was very great.  Why not a donkey?  They could easily get one from Wimbledon; the gardener would bring one.  But a donkey ride seemed a strange come-down after an elephant ride, and an idea had suddenly struck Sister Agatha.