We did not go next day to Benediction at the Reverend Mother's church. But late the same night, when it was quite dark, I crept out of my room into the noisy streets, hardly knowing where my footsteps were leading me, until I found myself in the piazza of the Convent of the Sacred Heart.
It was quiet enough there. Only the Carabinieri were walking on the paved way with measured steps, and the bell of the Dominican monastery was slowly ringing under the silent stars. I could see the light on the Pope's loggia at the Vatican and hear the clock of St. Peter's striking nine.
There were lights in the windows of some of the dormitories also, and by that I knew that the younger children, the children of the Infant Jesus, were going to bed. There was a light too, in the large window of the church, and that told me that the bigger girls were saying their night prayers.
Creeping close to the convent wall I heard the girls' voices rising and falling, and then through the closed door of the church came the muffled sound of their evening hymn—
"Ave maris stella
Dei Mater Alma—"
I did not know why I was putting myself wilfully to this bitter pain—the pain of remembering the happy years in which I myself was a girl singing so, and then telling myself that other girls were there now who knew nothing of me.
I thought of the Reverend Mother, and then of my own mother, my saint, my angel, who had told me to think of her when I sang that hymn; and then I remembered where I was and what had happened to me.
"Virgin of all virgins,
To thy shelter take me."
I felt like an outcast. A stifling sensation came into my throat and I dropped to my knees in the darkness. I thought I was broken-hearted.