It was very simple.  Soon after Compline was over the nun had gone to Unorna’s room, had knocked and had entered.  To her surprise Unorna was not there, but Sister Paul imagined that she had lingered over her prayers and would soon return.  The good nun had sat down to wait for her, and telling her beads had fallen asleep.  The unaccustomed warmth and comfort of the guest’s room had been too much for the weariness that constantly oppressed a constitution broken with ascetic practices.  Accustomed by long habit to awake at midnight to attend the service, her eyes opened of themselves, indeed, but a full hour later than usual.  She heard the clock strike one, and for a moment could not believe her senses.  Then she understood that she had been asleep, and was amazed to find that Unorna had not come back.  She went out hastily into the corridor.  The lay sister had long ago extinguished the hanging lamp, but Sister Paul saw the light streaming from Beatrice’s open door.  She went in and called aloud.  The bed had not been touched.  Beatrice was not there.  Sister Paul began to think that both the ladies must have gone to the midnight service.  The corridors were dark and they might have lost their way.  She took the lamp from the table and went to the balcony at which the guests performed their devotion.  It had been her light that had flashed across the door of the tabernacle.  She had looked down into the choir, and far below her had seen a figure, unrecognisable from that height in the dusk of the church, but clearly the figure of a woman standing upon the altar.  Visions of horror rose before her eyes of the sacrilegious practices of witchcraft, for she had thought of nothing else during the whole evening.  Lamp in hand she descended the stairs to the choir and reached the altar, providentially, just in time to save Beatrice from falling a victim again to the evil fascination of the enemy who had planned the destruction of her soul as well as of her body.

“What is this?  What are you doing in this holy place and at this hour?” asked Sister Paul, solemnly and sternly.

Unorna folded her arms and was silent.  No possible explanation of the struggle presented itself even to her quick intellect.  She fixed her eyes on the nun’s face, concentrating all her will, for she knew that unless she could control her also, she herself was lost.  Beatrice answered the question, drawing herself up proudly against the great altar and pointing at Unorna with her outstretched hand, her dark eyes flashing indignantly.

“We were talking together, this woman and I. She looked at me—­she was angry—­and then I fainted, or fell asleep, I cannot tell which.  I awoke in the dark to find myself lying upon the altar here.  Then she took hold of me and tried to make me sleep again.  But I would not.  Let her explain, herself, what she has done, and why she brought me here!”

Sister Paul turned to Unorna and met the full glare of the unlike eyes, with her own calm, half heavenly look of innocence.