Mother Sub-Prioress passed into the cell, and closed the door.

She was drawn, by the glow of the sunset, to the oriel window.  But on her way thither she found herself unexpectedly arrested before the marble group of the Virgin and Child.

Mother Sub-Prioress never could see a naked babe without experiencing a feeling of irritation against those who had failed to provide it with suitable clothing.  Possibly this was why she had hurriedly looked the other way if her eye chanced to fall upon the beautiful sculpture in the Prioress’s cell.

Now, for the first time, she really saw it.

She stood and gazed; then knelt, and tried to understand.

The tenderness reached her heart and shook it.  The encircling arms, the loving breast, the watchful mother-eyes; the exquisite human love, called forth by the necessity, the dependence, the helplessness of a little child.

And were there not souls equally helpless, and hearts just as dependent upon sympathy and tenderness?

The Prioress had understood this, and had ruled by love.

But Mother Sub-Prioress had ever preferred the briers and the burning.

She recalled a conversation she had had a day or two before with the Prior and the Chaplain, when they came to consult with her concerning the future of the Community, and her possible appointment.  In speaking of the late Prioress, the Prior had said:  “She ever seemed as one apart, who walked among the stars; yet full, to overflowing, of the milk of human kindness and the gracious balm of sympathy.”  He had then asked Mother Sub-Prioress if she felt able to follow in her steps.  To which Mother Sub-Prioress, vexed at the question, had answered, tartly:  Nay; that she knew no Milky Way!  Whereupon Father Benedict, a sudden gleam of approval on his sinister face, had interposed, addressing the Prior:  “Nay, verily!  Our excellent Sub-Prioress knows no Milky Way!  She is the brier, which hath sharply taught the tender flesh of each.  She is the bed of nettles from which the most weary moves on to rest elsewhere.  She is the fearsome burning, from which the frightened brands do snatch themselves!”

These words, spoken in approbation, had been meant to please; and at first she had been flattered.  Then the look upon the kind face of the Prior, had given her the sense of being shut up with Father Benedict in a fearsome Purgatory of their own making—­nay rather, in a hell, where pity, mercy, and loving-kindness were unknown.

Perhaps this was the hour when the change of mind in Mother Sub-Prioress really had its beginning, for Father Benedict’s terrible yet true description of her methods and her rule, now came forcefully back to her.

Putting out a trembling hand, she touched the little foot of the Babe.

“Give me tenderness,” she said, and an agony of supplication was in her voice; also a rain of tears softened the hard lines of her face.