Lynette gave her cheek, asking:
"Where is the Mother?"
The voice of Sister Tobias answered out of the purplish darkness:
"She has gone on with Sister Hilda-Antony and Sister Cleophée, dearie. She is going to sleep at the Convent with them, and I was to give you her love, and say good-night."
Say good-night! On this of all nights was Lynette to be dismissed without even the Mother's kiss? She gave back Beauvayse's parting hand-pressure almost mechanically. Then she heard his voice, close at her ear, say pantingly:
"No one will see.... Please, dearest!"
She turned her head, and their lips met under cover of the pansy-coloured darkness.... Then he was gone with Lady Hannah, and Lynette was walking home to the Convent bombproof, explaining to the astonished Sisters that the Mother knew; that the Mother approved of her engagement to Lord Beauvayse; and that they would probably be married very soon. Before the Relief ...
"'Before the Relief.' Well, no one but Our Lord knows when that's to be.... And so you're very happy, are you, dearie?"
Even as she gave her shy assent in answer to Sister Tobias's question, its commonplace homeliness, like the feeling of the thick dust and the scattered débris underfoot, brought back Lynette for a moment out of the golden, diamond-dusted, pearl-gemmed dream-world in which she had been straying, to wonder, Was she really very happy?
She asked herself the question sitting with the Sisters at their little scanty supper. She asked herself as she knelt with them in prayer, as she lay in bed, the Mother's place vacant beside her—Was she happy after all?