“Dear Mother, it is all over now,” Evelyn said to Mother Hilda in the passage, and the last of the ecclesiastics disappeared through a doorway, going to his lunch.

“Yes, dear Teresa, it is all over so far as this world is concerned.  We must think of her now in heaven.”

“And to-morrow we shall begin to think for whom we shall vote—­at least, you will be thinking.  I am not a choir sister, and am leaving you.”

“Is that decided, Teresa?”

“Yes, I think so.  Perhaps now would be the time for me to take off this habit; I only retained it at the Prioress’s wish.  But, Mother, though I have not discovered a vocation, and feel that you have wasted much time upon me, still, I wouldn’t have you think I am ungrateful.”

“My dear, it never occurred to me to think so.”  And the two women walked to the end of the cloister together, Evelyn telling Mother Hilda about the Prioress and the Prioress’s papers.

And from that day onward, for many weeks, Evelyn worked in the library, collecting her papers, and writing the memoir of the late Prioress, which, apparently, the nun had wished her to do, though why she should have wished it Evelyn often wondered, for if she were a soul in heaven it could matter to her very little what anybody thought of her on earth.  How a soul in heaven must smile at the importance attached to this rule and to these exercises!  How trivial it all must seem to the soul!...  And yet it could not seem trivial to the soul, if it be true that by following certain rules we get to heaven.  If it be true!  Evelyn’s thoughts paused, for a doubt had entered into her mind—­the old familiar doubt, from which no one can separate herself or himself, from which even the saints could not escape.  Are they not always telling of the suffering doubt caused them?  And following this doubt, which prayers can never wholly stifle, the old original pain enters the heart.  We are only here for a little while, and the words lose nothing of their original freshness by repetition; and, in order to drink the anguish to its dregs, Evelyn elaborated the words, reminding herself that time is growing shorter every year, even the years are growing shorter.

“The space is very little between me and the grave.”

Some celebrated words from a celebrated poet, calling attention to the brevity of life, came into her mind, and she repeated them again and again, enjoying their bitterness.  We like to meditate on death; even the libertine derives satisfaction from such meditation, and poets are remembered by their powers of expressing our great sorrow in stinging terms.  “Our lives are not more intense than our dreams,” Evelyn thought; “and yet our only reason for believing life to be reality is its intensity.  Looked at from the outside, what is it but a little vanishing dust?  Millions have preceded that old woman into the earth, millions shall follow her.  I shall be in the earth too—­in how many