“Margaret,” said I, “may I know thy story? I have told thee mine. Truly, it is not much to tell.”
“No,” she said, as if dreamily,—“not much: only such an one as will be told out by the mile rather than the yard, from thousands of convents on the day when the great doom shall be. Only the story of a crushed heart—how much does that matter to the fathers of the Order? There be somewhat too many in these cells for them to take any note of one.”
I remembered what Mother Gaillarde had said.
“It is terrible, if that be true,” I answered. “I thought I was the only one, and that made me unhappy because I must be so wicked. At times, in meditation, I have looked round the chamber and thought—Here be all these blessed women, wrapped in holy meditations, and only I tempted by wicked thoughts of the world outside, like Lot’s wife at Sodom.”
Margaret fairly laughed. “Verily,” said she, “if it were given to us to lift the veil from the hearts of all these blessed women, and scan their holy meditations, I reckon thine amaze would not be small. Annora, I think thou art a saint.”
“Impossible!” said I. “Why, I fell asleep in the midst of the Rosary a s’ennight back,—having been awake half the night before—and Father Benedict said I must do penance for it. Saints are not such as I.”
“Annora, if the angels that write in men’s books have no worse to set down in thine than what thou hast told me, I count they shall reckon their work full light. O humble and meek of heart, thinking all other better than thyself—trust me, they be, at best, like such as thou.”
Margaret left her station at my feet, and coming round, knelt down beside me, and laid her head on my shoulder.
“Kiss me, Sister,” she said.
So did I, at once, without thought: and then, perceiving what I had done, I was affrighted.