She gazed at him in bewilderment, and he explained to her carefully what he would do and what she must do. It took some time to make her understand, for her slow mind had not compassed such a possibility; but when once it was clear to her what was to be done, she was docility itself. Well for Sister Anne now that the strongest habit of her life was obedience. But for that, the lad, strong swimmer as he was, could not have brought her safe to shore.
That night the placid life of the convent throbbed and thrilled with an excitement unknown in its history. Sister Anne, for the first time in her existence, was the centre of a storm of solicitude, of attention, of agitation. She herself was unmoved. She came back from death as unemotionally as she had gone to meet it. She sat by the window of her room, wishing that she might be left alone to watch the moon rise above the quiet hills.
The Mother Superior, the curé himself, had visited her, had said strange and wonderful things to her which she scarcely understood. The whole Sisterhood buzzed about her like a hive, for it seemed that the fair-skinned lad of her adventure was the heir of a house whose name was famous in many lands, and the father was even now standing at her threshold.
Sister Anne was not embarrassed by the great presence, fame and wealth and high birth and all the glories of this world being indeed less than words to her. Moreover, her visitor brought to this interview with an old unlettered woman all the charm and suavity and tact of which he was so well the master. The tale his son had told had seemed to him incredible and touching, and he felt a desire to understand the impulses which had made possible so singular an episode. He soon found that she had indeed faced death in full knowledge of what she did; that she had wittingly given up her chance of escape that the boy might have his. But to find the motive was not so simple. Delicately he probed one channel after another: duty, heroism, religious training, in none of these could he find the clue. Her life, he reflected, could hardly have been so full of happiness as to have attached her very strongly to this world, and deftly he pursued that trail, still unsuccessfully.
Baffled for the moment, he was silent, watching her unrevealing face. The late summer twilight was darkening into deep shadows on the hillside, but the eastern sky was still clear yellow from the sunset. Just beyond that bank of clouds, Sister Anne thought, the moon would rise before long. The man beside her, still pondering his problem, made some comment on the clustering trees in the valley below.
She turned to him at once with a changed look.
'They are at their thickest now,' was all she said; but he saw that at last he had opened the closed door.
In a few moments more, under his skillful touch, were revealed to him the simple and profound sources of happiness on which her spirit fed. In sentences so incomplete, in thoughts so inarticulate as to be mere suggestion, he comprehended her, and at length, with infinite gentleness, drew forth the thread of explanation which he had sought so patiently.
She had felt for long, he gathered, that she owed a heavy debt in return for all the joy in life that had been hers. She felt that her life had held more happiness than she deserved, happiness for which she had made, it seemed to her, but inadequate return. When she had found the helpless lad, she had found also, it seemed, her chance of payment. If she might save his life or at least give her own in the effort, this debt that she owed the world would be lessened.
When she had managed in some fashion to convey this much to her sympathetic listener, she paused and looked at him wistfully.