"Nearly eleven. Have you any duties for which you should be replaced this morning?"
"There are a lot of things, I think," said Alex vaguely, "but I can get up."
"Very well," the Infirmarian acquiesced unemotionally. "There is much work to be done, as you say, and we nuns cannot afford to be ill for long."
Alex did not think that she was ill—she was quite able to get up and to dress herself, although her head was aching and her hands shook oddly.
She reflected with dull surprise that all the poignant misery of the days that had gone before seemed to have left her. Evidently this was what people meant by "getting over things." One suffered until one could bear no more, and then it was all numbness and inertia.
She felt a sort of surprised gratitude to God at the cessation of pain, as one who had undergone torture might feel towards the torturers for some brief respite.
Her thankfulness made tears come into her eyes, and she forced them back with a sort of wonder at herself, but that odd disposition to weep still remained with her.
As she went downstairs, rather slowly and cautiously, because her knees were shaking so strangely, she met a very little girl, the pet and baby of the whole establishment, climbing upwards. She was holding up the corners of her diminutive black apron with both hands, and after looking at the nun silently for a moment, she showed her that it contained two tiny, struggling kittens. "Les petits enfants de Minet," she announced gravely, and went on climbing, clasping her burden tenderly.
Alex could never have told what it was that struck her with so unbearable a sense of pathos in the sight of the little childish figure.
Quite suddenly the tears began to pour down her face, and she could neither have checked them nor have assigned any reason for them.