"No," said Madelon, escaping from her hands with an impatient toss. "Ah, don't go away yet," she added piteously. "Was it true what Soeur Ursule said about me?"
"About you, mon enfant?"
"Yes, about me—that I was to become a nun."
"Ah!" said Soeur Lucie, with the air of being suddenly enlightened, "yes—yes, I suppose so, since she said it. Now I must go, and do you go to sleep."
"No, no," cried Madelon, raising herself in the bed and stretching out both arms after Soeur Lucie's retreating figure. "Ah, Soeur Lucie, don't leave me. I can't be a nun; don't let them make me a nun!"
There was something so pitiful and beseeching in her accent, something so frail-looking in the little, white, imploring hands, that Soeur Lucie's heart was touched. She came back again.
"Ecoute, Madelon," she said, "you will be ill again to-morrow if you talk so much; lie down now, and tell me what it is you want. No one is going to make you a nun now, you know."
"No, not now, but by-and-by. Is it true that Aunt Thérèse said
I was to be made one?"
"Yes, that is true enough, I believe; but there is nothing to be unhappy about in that," answered Soeur Lucie, who naturally looked at things from a different point of view than Madelon's. "There are many girls who would be glad of such a chance; for you see, mon enfant, it is only because nothing could be refused to our late sainted Superior, that it has been arranged at all."
"Soeur Ursule said I should be a burthen," answered Madelon. "I don't want to be a burthen; I only want to go away. Ah! why do you keep me? I am miserable here; I always have been, and I always shall be—always."