* * * * *
But there was a third person in the play, by no means so passive an actor as Laura was wont to imagine her.
There is often a marvellous education in such a tedious parting with the world as Augustina was enduring. If the physical conditions allow it, the soul of the feeblest will acquire a new dignity, and perceptions more to the point. As she lay looking at the persons who surrounded her, Augustina passed without an effort, and yet wonderfully, as it seemed to her, into a new stage of thought and desire about them. A fresh, an eager ambition sprang up in her, partly of the woman, partly of the believer. She had been blind; now she saw. She felt the power of her weakness, and she would seize it.
Meanwhile, she made a rally which astonished all the doctors. Towards the end of the second week in May she had recovered strength so far that on several occasions she was carried down the chapel passage to the garden, and placed in a sheltered corner of the beech hedge, where she could see the bright turf of the bowling-green and the distant trees of the "Wilderness."
One afternoon Helbeck came out to sit with her. He was no sooner there than she became so restless that he asked her if he should recall Sister Rosa, who had retired to a distant patch of shade.
"No—no! Alan, I want to say something. Will you raise my pillow a little?"
He did so, and she looked at him for a moment with her haunting blue eyes, without speaking. But at last she said:
"Where is Laura?"
"Indoors, I believe."
"Don't call her. I have been talking to her, Alan, about—about what she means to do."