Soon I shall see before me the woman I have come so far to seek: the woman who never gave the gift of love without the gift of death.
The high white walls of the penitentiary glared down in the blazing southern sun. The languid Adriatic trailed its blue silken waters past the barred windows. I raised the heavy knocker; it fell from my hand with a reverberating clang, and the massive prison-door opened slowly before me.
The Mother Superior and two gentle-looking Sisters fluttered—black and white and timid as swallows—across the sunlit courtyard. They were expecting me.
“She whom you seek is in the chapel,” said the Mother Superior, in a low voice. “I will call her!” She left us. The two Sisters accompanied me up a broad stone staircase to a small waiting-room. Then they stood quietly beside me; and when I looked at them, they smiled.
In the silence that followed I could hear women's voices singing in the prison chapel, simple, untutored voices, clear and shrill:
“Kyrie eleison
Christe eleison...”
and the low notes of the organ rolled beneath the treble voices, full and deep;