'Is it wrong to love him still?' she asked.
But Monsignor Ippolito did not speak until his silence had lasted so long that Angela was a little frightened; not that he had any real doubt as to her intention, but because it was his duty to examine such a case of conscience in all its aspects.
'What does your own instinct tell you?' he asked at last.
'That it will not be wrong,' Angela answered with conviction. 'But I may be mistaken. That is why I come to you for advice.'
Again the churchman mused in silence for a while.
'I will tell you what I think,' he said, when he had made up his mind. 'There is a condition, which depends only on yourself, and of which you are the only judge. You ask my advice, but I can only show you how to ask it of your own heart. If your love for the man who is gone looks forward, prays and hopes, it will help you; if it looks back with tears for what might have been and with longing for what can never be, it will hinder you. More than that I cannot say.'
'I look forward,' Angela answered confidently. 'I pray and I hope.'
'If you are sure of that, you are safe,' said Monsignor Saracinesca. 'No one but yourself can know.'
'I began to work here hoping and praying that if I could do any good at all it might help him, wherever he is,' Angela went on. 'That is the only vocation I ever felt, and now I wish to take the veil because I think that as a professed nun I may be able to use better what little I have learned in two years and a half than if I stay on as a lay sister. It is not for myself, except in so far as I know that the only way to help him is to do my best here. As I hope that God may be merciful to him, so I hope that God will accept my work, my prayers, and my faith.'
The prelate looked at the delicate face and earnest eyes, and the quietly spoken words satisfied him and a little more. There could be nothing earthly in such love as that, he was sure, and such simple faith would not be disappointed. It was not the first time in his experience as a priest that he had known and talked with a woman from whom sudden death had wrenched the man she loved, or whom inevitable circumstances had divided from him beyond all hope of reunion; but he had never heard one speak just as Angela spoke, nor seen that look in another face. He was convinced, and felt that he could say nothing against her intention.