“It won’t be necessary. What I’ve done should last you for a long while. But if you have pain, come to me at once. Any time.”
What’d it be like, at all, not seeing him any more? Could it be that she’d become inordinately attached, the way the Imitation said was so wrong? And to a man, too.
She was a wicked creature, not worthy of the holy vocation.
“Is there nothing more needs doing?”
“Nothing at all. You have excellent teeth, Sister. There’ll be no more trouble, now those fillings are in.”
The smile he gave her! So that one hardly heard what he was saying....
“If the Reverend Mother wants anyone else seen to, I shall be very pleased to do what I can. Good-bye, Sister. I should like to have persuaded you that there’s plenty of good work to be done outside, too. Take a capable woman like yourself, now. It seems a shame you should be shutting yourself up inside four walls. Why, you—you might have been my secretary, if I could only afford to have one!”
That was a grand laugh of his, it made one want to laugh too, only that one might start crying somehow.
It seemed there’d be nothing left to look forward to in the whole world after the shake of the hand meaning good-bye. There was still that....
It was the queer way to feel entirely, and her forty years old.