“There, there,” said Mrs. Mulholland, unconscious of the tears running down her face, “what did I tell you? Come into the chapel, my dear, with me. You shall be quite quiet there, and we mustn’t keep Mother Juliana. Is not the doctor due now?”
“Yes. I came down to see mademoiselle first, but I must return to my infirmary at once. I will come and tell you what he has said, my child, but do not have false hopes. God knows what is best.”
She turned and glided noiselessly out of the room. Her whole demeanour was one of ageless, passionless aloofness. She was very unlike Mère Pauline, quick, alert, human.
“Ah, I wish that Mère Pauline could have been here to see you, my poor child,” cried Mrs. Mulholland, as though involuntarily struck by the contrast. “But human comfort can do very little for any of us. Now come with me, won’t you?”
She took Rosamund’s hand as though she had been guiding a child, and led her to the chapel door.
“Go in there,” she whispered huskily, pointing to the half-open door. “I’ll come and fetch you when the doctor has gone away again.”
Rosamund went in and heard the door swing to behind her.
The chapel was very still and hushed in the afternoon sunlight. A tiny purple patch danced and flickered over the wall. Nothing else moved. As Rosamund’s eyes became accustomed to the semi-gloom she saw that the figure of a nun knelt upon an upright carved prie-dieu just in front of the Sanctuary. The black veil and heavy habit hung in motionless folds. It seemed as though nothing could, or would, ever disturb that immovable contemplation again.
Rosamund knelt mechanically and remained on her knees, thoughts seething without any conscious volition of her own across the upper surface of her mind, and beneath, an abyss of misery toward which she felt herself slowly, slowly slipping. When the surface thoughts failed her, she knew subconsciously that she must touch those yawning depths. She wondered if the nun was praying. Making intercession, perhaps, for the Superior whose illness had flung the community into disarray—asking for the forgiveness of her own half imaginary sins—involuntary infringements of some convent regulation. Was she praying for those whom she loved—those who had perchance been all the world to her, before she chose to renounce all human ties and give herself to God alone?
Rosamund slipped a little further towards the abyss with the thought.