He waited patiently, shyly. I didn't look up, but I knew his face was half smiling and suppliant.
"We shall miss you," he said.
"But I shall be back in a week!"
"We shall miss you ... laying the trays out here."
"Everything passes," I said gaily.
He whistled a little and balanced himself against his stick.
"You are like me, Sister," he said earnestly; and I saw that he took me for a philosopher.
He shuffled on almost beyond the circle of light, paused while my lips moved in a vague smile of response, then moved on into the shadow. The low, deep quiet of the corridor resumed its hold on me. The patter of reflection in my brain proceeded undisturbed.
"You are like me!" The deepest flattery one creature pays its fellow ... the cry which is uttered when another enters "our country."
Far down the corridor a slim figure in white approaches, dwarfed by the smoky distance; her nun-like cap floating, her scarlet cape, the "cape of pride," slipped round her narrow shoulders.