Her face brightened for an instant, and then she shook her head, and said,—
"Ah, you are a child; you are an angel. You do not know." And then she began to weep again, but more quietly. "I wish you had seen him; then you would understand better. It was not wrong for me to love him once; and he was so different from every one else—so true and gentle, and so brave."
I listened while she continued to speak of him, and, at last, looking wistfully at me, she said, in a low, timid voice, "I cannot help trusting you." And she drew from inside a fold of her robe a little piece of yellow paper, with a few words written on it, in pale, faded ink, and a lock of brown hair.
"Do you think it is very wrong?" she asked. "I have never told the confessor, because I am not quite sure if it is a sin to keep it; and I am quite sure the sisters would take it from me if they knew. Do you think it is wrong?"
The words were very simple—expressions of unchangeable affection, and a prayer that God would bless her and keep them for each other until better times.
I could not speak, I felt so sorry; and she murmured, nervously taking her poor treasures from my hands, "You do not think it right. But you will not tell? Perhaps one day I shall be better, and be able to give them up; but not yet. I have nothing else."
Then I tried to tell her that she had something else;—that God loved her and had pity on her, and that perhaps He was only answering the prayer of her betrothed, and guarding them in His blessed keeping until they should meet in better times. At length she seemed to take comfort; and I knelt down with her, and we said together the prayers she had been commanded to recite.
When I rose, she said thoughtfully, "You seem to pray as if some one in heaven really listened and cared."
"Yes," I said; "God does listen and care."
"Even to me?" she asked; "Even for me? Will he not despise me, like the holy sisterhood?"