“Safest from what?”
“Oh, temptations, troubles, sorrows.”
“Then I don’t see,” said Cecily, “why we don’t all just be nuns and make an end to it.”
There was a silence and then a giggle.
“Have to enlarge the convent some.”
“Be pretty dull outside.”
“Never get me to agree to that. Besides, there are reasons——”
Some of the reasons occurred to Cecily. She blushed a little and let the subject pass in a chorus of inconsequent and flippant comment. But later, in a corner of the recreation hall Agnes herself revived it. There were four of them—Agatha Ward, Madeline von Vlectenburg, Agnes Hearding and Cecily. They drew together in an earnest little group around the green shaded lamp by the divan and discussed it. For no one of them wanted that supreme choice of the Jesuit priest’s for a woman’s life—no one of them wanted to be a nun. Their faces were vivid with interest and excitement. Madeline, plump and blond and glowing, had already a personal interest in a man. She would see him when she got home again, and now that she was through school—she paused thrillingly. And Agnes began to talk of love with all the ardor that she threw sometimes into her sensuous enjoyment of religion. If she really loved a man, said Agnes——. Agatha was not so sure of love. She knew a woman who wrote and who had a flat of her own and who deliberately had not married. A life-work was sometimes better than marriage and more interesting. The girls listened seriously, for Mother Benedict herself had said that there was great talent in Agatha’s verses.
But Cecily contributed nothing. Deeper than the easy talk of the girls ran the message of the priest, and deeper still ran that strange adventurous wonder as to the solution of it all. The girls were choosing for themselves. They were not telling why one chose as one did.
Graduation week was busy. One had no time to think. The orderly days were crammed full and the life of the convent centered protectingly, admiringly, lovingly about the fifteen girls who were leaving it for the world. The simple parties, the award of the medal for composition, the medal for oratory, the coming of the parents, the special music for the last Mass, the unpacking of graduation dresses sent from home, the gentle flurry of the convent world absorbed the girls. It was only on the last night—the night before the final exercises—that Mother Fénelon, alone in the study room, looked up to see Cecily standing before her. Cecily’s eyes were frightened and fearful and excited and the nun drew the girl down upon a chair beside the desk, holding the nervous hands in the hollow of her own.