years?  In a few months perhaps, in a few weeks perhaps.  Possibly within the next few days I may hear how long I may expect to live, for what is more common than to wake with a pain, and on consulting a doctor to see a grave look come into his face, and to hear him tell of some mortal disease beyond his knife’s reach?  Words come reluctantly to one’s tongue.  “How long have I to live?” “About a year, about six months; I cannot say for certain.”

Doctors are answering men and women in these terms every day, and Evelyn thought of some celebrated sayings that life’s mutability has inspired.  She remembered some from the Bible, and some from Shakespeare; and those she remembered from Fitzgerald, from his “Omar Khayyam,” took her back to the afternoon she spent with Owen by the Serpentine, to the very day when he gave her the poem to read, thinking to overcome her scruples with literature.

“There were no scruples in me then.  My own business, ‘The Ring,’ is full of the pagan story of life and death.  We have babbled about it ever since, trying to forget or explain it, without, however, doing either; I tried to forget it on the stage, and did not succeed, but it was not fear of death that brought me here.  The nuns do not succeed better than I; all screens are unavailing, for the wind is about everywhere—­a cold, searching wind, which prayers cannot keep out; our doorways are not staunch—­the wind comes under the door of the actress’s dressing-room and under the door of the nun’s cell in draughts chilling us to the bone, and then leaving us to pursue our avocations for a time in peace.  The Prioress thought that in coming here she had discovered a way to heaven, yet she was anxious to defend herself from her detractors upon earth.  If she had believed in her celestial inheritance she would have troubled very little, and I should be free to go away now.  Perhaps it is better as it is,” she reflected.  And it seemed to her that no effort on her part was called for or necessary.  She was certain she was drifting, and that the current would carry her to the opposite bank in good time; she was content to wait, for had she not promised the Prioress to perform a certain task?  And it was part of her temperament to leave nothing undone; she also liked a landmark, and the finishing of her book would be a landmark.

She was even a little curious to see what turn the convent affairs would take, and as she sat biting the end of her pen, thinking, the sound of an axe awoke her from her reverie.  Trees were being felled in the garden; “and an ugly, red-brick building will be run up, in which children of city merchants will be taught singing and the piano.”  Was it contempt for the world’s ignorance in matters of art that filled her heart? or was she animated with a sublime pity for those parents who would come to her (if she remained in the convent, a thing she had no intention of doing) to ask her, Evelyn Innes, if she thought that Julia would come to something