The cool, sweet room seemed empty, and Veronica emerged from the shadow, almost a shadow.  There were two windows, lattice panes, and these let the light fall upon the counter, along which the vestments were laid for the priest.  The oak press was open, and it exhaled an odour of orris root and lavender, and Veronica, standing beside it, a bunch of keys at her girdle, once more reminded Evelyn of the mediaeval virgin she had seen in the Rhenish churches.

“I have finished collecting your aunt’s papers.”

“And now you are going to leave us?”

There was a sob in the girl’s voice, and all Evelyn’s thoughts about her seemed to converge and to concentrate.  There was the girl before her who passed through life without knowing it, interested in putting out the vestments for an old priest, hiding his amice so that no other hands but hers should touch it; this and the dream of an angel who visited her in sleep and whose flesh was filled with luminous tints constituted all she knew of life, all she would ever know.  There were tears in her eyes now, there was a sob in her voice; she would regret her friend for a day, for a week, and then the convent life would draw about her like great heavy curtains.  Evelyn remembered how she had told her of a certain restlessness which kept her from her prayers; she remembered how she had said to her, “It will pass, everything will pass away.”  She would become an old nun, and would be carried to the graveyard just as her aunt had been.  When would that happen?  Perhaps not for fifty years.  Sooner or later it would happen.  And Evelyn listened to Veronica saying the convent would never be the same without her, saying: 

“Once you leave us you will never come back.”

“Yes, I shall, Veronica; I shall come once or twice to see you.”

“Perhaps it would be better for you not to come at all,” the girl cried, and turned away; and then going forward suddenly as Evelyn was about to leave the sacristy, she said: 

“But when are you leaving?  When are you leaving?”

“To-morrow; there is no reason why I should wait any longer.”

“We cannot part like this.”  And she put down the chalice, and the women went into a chill wind; the pear-trees were tossing, and there were crocuses in the bed and a few snowdrops.

“You had better remain until the weather gets warmer; to leave in this bleak season!  Oh, Sister, how we shall miss you!  But you were never like a nun.”

They walked many times to and fro, forgetful of the bleak wind blowing.

“It must be so, you were never like a nun.  Of course we all knew, I at least knew... only we are sorry to lose you.”

The next day a carriage came for Evelyn.  The nuns assembled to bid her goodbye; they were as kind as their ideas allowed them to be, but, of course, they disapproved of Evelyn going, and the fifteen hundred pounds she left them did not seem to reconcile them to her departure.  It certainly did not reconcile Mother Winifred, who refused to come down to wish her goodbye, saying that Evelyn had deceived them by promising to remain, or at all events led them to think she would stay with them until the school was firmly established.  Mother Philippa apologised for her, but Evelyn said it was not necessary.