With a final shake of the pillow and arrangement of the bed-clothes, Soeur Lucie went away, leaving Madelon, not to sleep, but to lie broad awake, framing the most dismal little pictures of the future.  And was this to be the end of it all, then?—­the end of her vague dreams, her undefined hopes, which, leaping over a dim space of intervening years, had rested on a future of indefinite brightness lying somewhere outside these convent walls?  Ah, was all indeed at an end?  Never to pass these dull walls again, never to see anything but these dreary rooms,—­all her life to be one unvarying, relentless routine, day after day, year after year—­to be forced to teach stupid children, like Soeur Ursule, or to make jam and embroider alter-cloths, like Soeur Lucie, to say such long prayers, and to wear such ugly dresses, thinks poor Madelon, with a queer jumble of the duties and obligations of a nun’s life.  Ah! what would be the use of getting well and strong again, if that were all that life had in store for her?  “Why did I not die?” thinks the poor child, tossing restlessly from side to side.  “I wish I was dead!  Ah! why did I not die?  I wish I had never been born!” To her, as to all inexperienced minds, life appeared as a series of arbitrary events, rather than as a chain of dependent circumstances ceaselessly modifying each other, and she could not conceive the possibility of any gradual change of position being brought about in the slow course of years.  The long succession of grey, weary days, which she had lately taught herself to consider as a path that must be traversed, but which would still lead ultimately to a future of most supreme happiness, suddenly seemed to terminate in a grave black as death itself, from which there could be no escape.  “If papa were here,” thinks Madelon, “he would never allow it; he would never leave me in this horrible place, he would take me away.  Oh! papa, papa, why did you die?” And burying her face in the pillow, she began to sob and cry in her weakness and despair.

But this last thought of her father had suggested a new set of ideas and memories to Madelon, and by-and-by she stopped crying, and began to think again, confusedly at first, but presently with a more definite purpose gradually forming itself in the darkness of her bewildered thoughts.  Has she not promised her father never to become a nun?  Perhaps he had thought of something like this happening, and that was why he had made her promise, and of course she must keep her word.  But how is she to do that? wonders Madelon.  If Monsieur Horace were here, indeed, he might help her.  Ah, if Monsieur Horace was but here!  Should she write to him, and tell him how unhappy she was, and ask him to come and take her away?  He had given her his English address, and told her to be sure and let him know, if she were in any trouble, or wanted any help.  “But then,” thinks our foolish little Madelon, with the most quixotic notions busy in her tired little brain, “I have not