'You cannot do more,' said Monsignor Saracinesca, 'nor can I.'
The Mother Superior turned up her white face and looked at him so steadily that he gazed at her in surprise.
'It ought to be stopped,' she said, with sudden energy. 'It may be wrong to call it suicide and to interfere on that ground, but there is another, and a good one. I am responsible for the hospital here, for the nursing in it, and for the Sisters who are sent out to private cases. Year after year, one, two, and sometimes three of my best young nurses go away to these leper asylums in Rangoon and other places in the Far East. It is not the stupid ones that go, the dull, devoted creatures who could do that one thing well, because it is perfectly mechanical and a mere question of prophylaxis, precaution, and routine—and charity. Those that go always seem to be the best, the very nurses who are invaluable in all sorts of difficult cases from an operation to a typhoid fever; the most experienced, the cleverest, the most gifted! How can I be expected to keep up our standard if this goes on year after year? It is outrageous! And the worst of it is that the "vocation" is catching! The clever ones catch it because they are the most sensitively organised, but not the good, simple, humdrum little women who would be far better at nursing lepers than at a case of appendicitis—and better in heaven than in a leper asylum, for that matter!'
Monsignor Saracinesca listened in silence to this energetic tirade; but when the little white volcano was quiescent for a moment, he shook his head. It was less an expression of disapproval than of doubt.
'It is manifestly impossible to send the least intelligent of the Sisters, if they do not offer to go,' he answered. 'Besides, how would you pick out the dull ones? By examination?'
He was not without a sense of humour, and his sharply-chiselled lips twitched a little but were almost instantly grave again. The Mother Superior's profile was as still as a marble medallion.
'It ought to be stopped altogether,' she said presently, with conviction. 'Meanwhile, though I have told Sister Giovanna that it is not my place to hinder her, much less my right, I tell you plainly that I will prevent her from going, if I can!'
This frank statement did not surprise the prelate, who was used to her direct speech and energetic temper, and liked both. But he said little in answer.
'That is your affair, Reverend Mother. You will do what your conscience dictates.'
'Conscience?' repeated the nun with a resentful question in her tone. 'If the word really means anything, which I often doubt, it is an instinctive discernment of right and wrong in one's own particular case, to be applied to the salvation of one's own soul. Is it not?'