"I am the queen of sorrow, crowned and frozen on my desert throne," murmured the girl, in a trance-like abstraction.
"Salome, my child!" said the mother-superior, gazing anxiously into her stony face, whose eyes had never moved from their fixed stare; "Salome, my dear daughter, look at me."
"'I am the star of sorrow, pale and lonely in the wintry sky.'"
"My poor girl, what do you mean?"
"I read that somewhere, long ago,—oh, so long ago, when I was a happy child, and yet I wept then for that solitary mourner as I am not able to weep now for myself, though it suits me just as much," murmured Salome, in the same trance-like manner, still staring on the floor, as she continued:
"Yes, just as much, just as much, for—
"Never was lament begun
By any mourner under sun
That e'en it ended fit but one!"
"Salome, look at me, speak to me, my dear daughter," said the abbess, tenderly pressing her hand, and seeking to catch her fixed and staring eyes.
Salome slowly raised those woeful eyes to the lady's face, and asked:
"Mother, good mother, did you ever know any one in all your life so heavily stricken as I am?"