One young girl, who was walking under the arches, regarded her with great interest; and finally, leaving the group by whom she was surrounded, approached the nun, dropped on her knees in the grass before her, and, looking in her face, said earnestly:
"Well, my sister, are you better this evening?"
Sister Aloyse blushed slightly, just as porcelain is tinged with a faint rose-color when a flame is passed behind it, and answered in a voice sweet and low:
"Thank you, Camille, I am not well, and I shall never be any better till I come into the presence of our Lord. Look! does it not seem indeed as if the gates of heaven were opening yonder?"
She pointed to the west, then filled with the glory and splendor of purple and gold and flame colors.
"Yet one cannot go there," answered Camille in a caressing tone.
"Oh! yes; provided the great God will receive us. And something warns me that I shall shortly go to him."
Both now became silent, Camille sadly regarding her companion. Educated in this convent, she had always been accustomed to see Sister Aloyse there, where she was much beloved. She would like to have given her some pleasure, but what could she give, or what could she say, to a person so detached from earthly things, and whose aspirations were fixed on joys eternal?
The nun was still thinking, praying perhaps; and after a long silence she said,
"Camille, you must come and see me some time before I go away from here. But now good-night, dear!"