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others, these things are the discipline of the higher class. We would escape it if we could, yes, but God knows best. One sees the highest intellects tried by this period of decline, even of senility. It must be the final lesson if we could see aright, but we do not understand the Master."

Christina's fingers pressed his hand. "We shall understand each other," she said; "one's children are so dear, but they do not understand, how should they? They think the thoughts of their own period and generation."

The cab drew up at the old familiar door. Christina had elected to keep the house, as it was her own property. The rain was falling heavily, but Theresa held the door open, and gaslight and firelight welcomed her warmly."

"You will take supper with me?" Mr. Ingleby assented, and they went into the house together.

Theresa followed her mistress upstairs. "I put a match to your bedroom fire, ma'am," she explained, apologetically; "it's that fresh today and that soft."

Christina's eyes filled with tears. Kindliness touched her easily now, according to her need of it.

"Oh! dear Tessy," she murmured,

CHAPTER I.

"and my shoes warming, and my shawl! How thoughtful of you." Theresa lingered.

"And Master Laurence, ma'am?" "He's gone now. Oh! yes, it went off very well. Miss Lucilla ... Mrs. Laurence I must say now-looked very well."

"Glory be to God for that, ma'am. Ah! now God bless them both, and isn't it strange now the two of us here and old in a manner of speaking, begging your pardon, ma'am for you wear your years wonderfully light, and all this day I was thinking of the day I came here, and you telling me you were looking for a baby to come home, and asking me did I mind. And that baby, Master Laurence, that the two of us rared together, and he nearly dying on us. And now there he is married. The ways of God is wonderful. Two children they are, God help them."

"Oh! Theresa, how we shall miss him, our own little boy!"

The two women were both tearful. Christina laid her head on the old servant's shoulder and wept, for rank is no barrier between kind and sorrowful hearts. And so in the mist of tears the old order changed never to come back again.

BOOK V.

The next ceremony of importance that Christina attended was the profession of a sister at the Convent of the Good Shepherd in Westhampton. As Hermione was the person most concerned the ceremony had to be viewed in a light entirely different from Christina's previous conception of it.

Christina was a little surprised at her daughter-in-law's eagerness to be present. One did not associate Lucilla with religious ceremonies, but the girl declared that she wished to be present at the profession in the morning and

the reception in the afternoon. She vouchsafed no reason to her motherin-law. The two women were dutifully friendly but never confidential.

The time was Michaelmas. There was a clean windy sky, white clouds in a vast blue heaven. The town seemed fresh and merry this morning, a town revived after the parched, dusty days of August. The ampelopsis on the houses was deepening into every shade of crimson; the virginia creeper had shades of copper and dark red. Autumn's flowers were coming into their own; one saw

gladioli and Michaelmas daisies, all the sunflower tribe, and the second bloom of roses.

Christina took much pleasure in these signs of the season. Autumn had her sympathy. She had been exhausted by August, but now in late September came this happy freshness.

The convent was an old building roofed with weather-beaten tiles; a new chapel stood close by. A walled garden lay behind it and there were new laundry buildings with a bleachgreen at a short distance from the old house.

Lucilla was waiting for her motherin-law at the big gate surmounted by a

cross.

"I was afraid to go in alone," she said, "but several people have gone in -quite smart women too."

"Yes," Christina answered a little dryly. "Hermione and her relations can afford to be smart." She rang

the bell and the gate was opened by an apple-faced old woman. They passed up the drive and into the Convent, where a sister received them and sent them on by the cloister to the chapel.

There were many people kneeling here in a sunny misty atmosphere. The chairs, Christina found, were the characteristically uncomfortable chairs of the High Church party. But she felt soothed and awed by the beauty of the chancel, its sculpture and marble, the flowers and fine needlework, all its evidence of ungrudging devotion.

The ceremony was a very simple one, so quiet, so much instilled by peace and goodwill that the thought of the sacrifice involved in this lifelong profession was not insistent.

Hermione entered in her black serge dress, and her novice's white veil crowned by a wreath of white flowers. She knelt at a prie-Dieu before the altar; she spoke her solemn vow, she

signed it on the altar. Her wreath and bouquet were laid down beside it, and the black veil and scapular were put on.

Lucilla watched with eager attention. It was all new and very strange to her. She was half-frightened. Her world ignored this other world, scarcely knew of its existence, yet here it was, as vital as her own. She looked about her with curiosity at the women and the few men who had assembled. Many of them were fashionable and well dressed, they were people of the world, yet they seemed entirely at home in this fragrant sunny world of the religious life. Then there were the nuns, those inconceivable women who of free will, on the bare hypothesis of a spiritual state, give up all that makes life good. Lucilla wondered over them. The faces she had seen under the black veils, framed in white, had been rosy happy faces. She paid no heed to the sermon; it was as Greek to her, this talk of the religious life and its blessings. Mary of Bethany, the subject of the discourse, was altogether alien to her mind. But Hermione was real; she was, moreover, beautiful and full of vitality. The riddle of her self-renunciation confounded Lucilla.

The profession was followed by the English Mass. This was of course familiar to the girl, for she had been confirmed.

"I have had her done," said her mother to a friend, "and the dress and tulle veil are very sweet." At this time Lucilla had certainly been taught something, but the impression was a surface one, effaced very quickly.

Today she was impressed, moved strangely by the atmosphere of the place and the ceremony. She went back to lunch with her mother-in-law, and talked kindly and sympathetically of Rosa and Rosa's new baby in the far-away Canadian house. Christina

felt grateful for this attention. Lucilla was generally so much absorbed in a hundred affairs unknown to her motherin-law that domesticities were banished from the conversation.

In the afternoon they returned to Hermione's reception at the Convent. Tea was laid in the Refrectory, and a wedding-cake dominated the table. Lucilla was amazed to hear the nuns laugh and talk like women of ordinary make. She was told that one had been an "Honorable," and the news deepened her surprise to awe. their veils and black dresses these women had a curious distinction that made the variegated costumes of the laity seem a little dowdy.

In

She was startled by a hand on her arm and a laugh.

"Well! Lucilla, do you feel as if you were at a sort of moral Barnum's?"

Lucilla turned and looked into Hermione's laughing face.

"No... oh! no. I was just thinking." "Come into the garden and tell me what you were thinking. Have you had some cake . . . isn't it a nice one? Our old cook made it, with tears I believe. She thinks I'm a sort of vestal virgin being bricked up. Do come out with me."

Lucilla followed the tall black figure down a stone corridor to a big door that opened into a walled garden. The garden lay on a slight slope. Its mellow brick walls were gay with nasturtiums. The wide herbaceous borders were starry with Michaelmas daisies. The walk ended in a grotto where there was a crucifix.

Bees and shining lazy flies hummed over the flowers and on the walls. The garden seemed like a cup that held the afternoon sunshine.

"How quiet it is," said Lucilla. She spoke shyly. Awe of her companion still lingered in her mind. "Do you come here to dream?" Hermione laughed.

"There's hardly any time for dreaming here," she answered, "and I've been a novice till today. Novices are not indulged in dreams. You see there's always something to be done in a convent. One goes by clockwork routine from one duty to another."

The two women were facing each other. Lucilla's dark eyes met the blue Teutonic eyes of the nun.

"And will it go on always . always like that?" Lucilla asked breathlessly, "no parties, no theatres, no men to talk to . . . nothing of what makes life bearable?"

Hermione nodded.

"The routine goes on always. Does it seem dreadful to you?"

"Dreadful? . . . oh! it's stifling, it's like prison, or like some terrible machine. I should run away. I would have to get free."

"But Lucilla, we are never kept against our will. I've chosen it. I have one vocation, you have another. Were you stifled at losing your freedom on your wedding-day?"

"Perhaps I was. O Hermione! you are not easily shocked . . . let me talk to you. The Travises are so

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so very good, I never feel I dare be myself when they are near. Of course Laurence is different, but he's too tolerant. I think he'd bear anything. But none of them understand how I love life, how I want to make the most of every second of it. I cannot understand you with your beauty and your money and your popularity burying yourself here. Is it because you want to go to Heaven so badly?"

The nun shook her head.

"No, it's not that. I don't think about Heaven very much, at least not the Heaven you mean. The Heaven I want must come on earth with material signs like proper housing and decent sanitation. But a Heaven in

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"Then tell me why you did this thing today. I can't understand. Make me see it, if you can."

Hermione walked beside her companion in silence for a minute, then she spoke.

"I suppose," she said, "that it was a rather overwhelming sense of gratitude that began it for me; I had so much

everything I wanted. Then I noticed that some girls had nothing at all. It seemed to me unfair of God. Then I thought that perhaps God wanted me to share my happiness, just as we give children sweets, wanting them to share with others. Always, always it came upon me that love of God and love of one's neighbor are the two aims of life. Christ said so, didn't He? When you love your neighbors you've got to love Him too. I love human beings. It isn't good of me to try to serve them, because they interest and amuse me the whole time. And this rescue work that we do here interests me more than anything. Before I knew, I used to think of ruined women as a class quite distinct, made somehow differently from ourselves; I didn't realize them as girls like us. But when one knows them individually one begins to care so much, and the more one loves the more one begins to want God. Oh! what does Heaven matter? Who would care to be in Heaven while they could help God in His work on earth?"

Hermione's eyes blazed with a blue light of enthusiasm.

"It's that," she said, "which is so splendid. One begins in a groveling way to try and make things better, and suddenly one becomes aware that one is doing an infinitesimal part of a vast work beside Christ Himself. The sense of being fellow-worker with Him is better than anything.

One

begins just little by little to understand God, because one feels as He does for these poor girls."

Lucilla put out her hand and sought Hermione's.

"Hermione

I think, I think," she said shyly, "that if I were very bad or very sad, I'd come to you. You wouldn't kick me away, would you?"

Hermione held the hand tight.

"No. If ever I can help you, Lucilla, under any circumstances, I will. Please believe that."

"Very well! I shall remind you of your promise."

They walked on. The slight selfconsciousness that follows great earnestness fell upon them. "I'm afraid I've been talking big," said Hermione; "you see this is my fête day. I'm on the mountain top today, but of course I shall have Saharas of dry dullness to explore. No doubt I shall wander in the wilderness forty years before I'm done. I think life is pretty fair to us all. Whatever we do we can't avoid discontent and barrenness of soul. I'm sure married people know that. I don't think the strictest Religious Order on earth provides discipline comparable to that endured by the average working man's wife with a large young family."

"Yes," Lucilla answered, "the sameness of things. . . that is what I find hard to bear. Endless days, all the same before one . . . and then to get old and ill, and to be out of things."

"You'll have Laurence. He's such a dear. And I hope you'll have children. "Yes, I wouldn't mind. It would be something to think about."

They had made the round of the garden; a bell was ringing.

"That's for Vespers," said Hermione. "I suppose you will both be coming. But I'll say good-bye to you here."

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Of all international bonds, that of scholarship has perhaps been the most thorough. The sword has severed it, and the wound, sore and inflamed, will heal but slowly. Under no conditions can one imagine any speedy resumption of that friendly intercourse which the fellowship of knowledge requires. Germany owes an atonement too great for any short period to fulfil. Isolated by her own deeds, she must stand apart whilst time heals the wounds she has inflicted upon the body of Europe. The fissure cloven by this war in the fabric of European relations, commercial, civil, and scholastic, cannot be patched by a peace treaty. Germany has chosen deliberately to wage war with a ruthlessness that has often been revealed in theory, but is now manifest in practice, amid blood and cries and tears. Presuming that since war is destruction, its logic admits no restraint whatsoever, Germany has applied herself remorselessly to the simple aim of killing, as it is understood in the jungle, untrammeled by rules and unrestrained by sentiment. She has shown the lack of logic in the laudable attempts of the Hague to mingle the dictates of humanity with the practice of war, which is essentially inhumanity. But beyond all this, Germany has shown that, apart from the fear lest her methods react against herself, nothing weighs with her, neither treaty nor obligation, neither humanity nor mercy. Against every man, woman, and child her war is declared. Her Press, her people, and

her scholars endorse that policy. By so doing, they have rendered impossible the renewal of old relationships after the war, the interchange of students in the Universities, the desire for translation of German books, the commerce in thought and knowledge. It is clearer every day that the future progress of our learning and civilization must proceed in sharp separation from the Kultur of Germany, with which it was formerly so closely connected, but which now has become a by-word of reproach in our streets.

Such separation, however, cannot be equally marked at all points. The modern fabric of civilization is too close a unity to admit of any entire isolation of one part from the rest. No useful invention of German science, for example, can be ignored. All that German research can contribute to the future progress of humanity will be but a part payment placed on account against the debt she owes. It is rather in the normative sciences, therefore, than in those which have issues directly practical and commercial, that the separation of Germany from Europe will be most marked. Our acquaintance with German scholarship in these directions will be almost entirely confined to whatever may pass to us through the medium of neutrals; and though German books and periodicals will come through once more, their numbers and influence will be greatly lessened. It is incontestable that the German hegemony in learning has departed, as far as this

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