I hate to think that my dear Reverend Mother was doing this consciously in order to break down my defences, but the effect was the same. Little by little, during the few days she was with me, she bridged the space back to my happy girlhood, for insensibly I found myself stirred by the emotions of the convent, and breathing again the air of my beloved Rome.
On the afternoon of the fourth day of her visit I was sitting up by her side in front of my window, which was wide open. It was just such a peaceful evening as our last one at Nemi. Not a leaf was stirring; not a breath of wind in the air; the only sounds we heard were the lowing of the cattle waiting to be milked, the soft murmur of the sea, and the jolting of a springless cart that was coming up from the shore, laden with sea wrack.
As the sun began to sink it lit blazing fires in the windows of the village in front—especially in the window of my mother's room, which was just visible over the tops of the apple trees in the orchard.
The Reverend Mother talked of Benediction. If she were in Rome she would be in church singing the Ora pro nobis.
"Let us sing it now. Shall we?" she said.
At the next moment her deep majestic contralto, accompanied by my own thin and quavering soprano, were sending out into the silent air the holy notes which to me are like the reverberations of eternity:
"Mater purissima
Ora pro nobis.
Mater castissima
Ora pro nobis."
When we had finished I found my hand lying in her lap. Patting it gently she said:
"Mary, I am leaving you to-morrow."
"So soon?"