This innocent, forgiving Christ, who had become for her a harsh rival: she would look at him in the classroom, in the reception hall, in the corridor, on the playground, and in the chapel — look at him with open defiance, as though between her and him there lay some old estrangement and grudge.

And in a blazing fit she would take to committing errors on purpose, and affecting a reckless temper — she, the very soul of meekness and contented character — all so as to stand before the nun as one gloating and insistent, sparing no effort to vex her and to waste her time in barren argument.

And in one of those recesses of the school year that fall at a fixed season annually — a few numbered days for spiritual exercises, in which the nuns multiply their prayers, schooling the wayward soul to submission for the sake of good and fruitful works, and curbing the pull of temptation toward even the smallest worldly delights...

our girl had at last, after long effort, finished persuading her conservative parents that she must remain at the school night and day, because she wished to become acquainted with things she did not know — and things she could, in any case, turn to profit.

And there, in the first row of the close-set benches stretching in a long, broad line across the great courtyard, our girl would sit facing Sister Madeleine, listening to her homilies in mute absorption; and whenever the nun addressed a question to her — as she very often did — or singled her out with an admo-nition, a gesture, or a glance...

she would feel as if her world were spinning her round in one swift, whispering turn, to set her down before some particular thing whose essence she could not grasp, nor the source of its whispering...

Is it "Utopia"? Or is it the soul's dissolving in the wine of human perfection?!

She does not know!!

And everything grows confused within her; a burning tear mingles with her answer, which scarcely comes clear, so that it is heard like the muttering of a hoarse whisper...

And she strains to hide it — above all from the nun, who, it seems to her, has begun to mock her... and she cannot.

And her clouded looks collide with the looks of the nun — all gentleness and strength... and radiant smile — and she slips away from before her, for all the world like a fugitive.

And she takes to climbing the long staircase with the fury of a pupil who has failed — climbing it in exhausted bounds, her breath coming fast upon itself, wrapped in a scorching pride...

And there, in the boarding sec-tion, she would roam the convent room by room and corridor by corridor; and in every dormitory, refectory, or common room she would stop before the Crucified One, to see him in a new posture, and to look at him with looks of bitter mockery and dewy hope at once.

And hope mingles with mockery, and the two tug violently, insis-tently, at that smooth young soul which events had never scratched and afflictions never stormed.

And she props the small head

between the two small hands, and fancies she has triumphed over... herself, when her fit of mute weeping is done.

But before she goes down to the courtyard to take her place among the pupils, she feels her hands carrying a portable wooden ladder — out of the dark corridor — to set it in the great hall at the feet of the Crucified One; and she climbs upon it and gazes up at the bowed head crowned with its wreath of thorns, as though gazing at the overflowing smile scattered upon the points of those thorns — the smile of Sister Madeleine — and then she feels no more sting, and no more rancor, but only something brim-ming over from her soul to flood the universe with its radiance, its bounty, and its warmth.

And she feels her two hands lifting down the crucified Lord to smother him with kisses.

Are they the kisses of faith? Are they the kisses of certainty? No — neither the one nor the other.

It is only the soul, at the very beginning of its forming, quivering with the tremor of knowledge at the hands of a kindred soul — without design, and without intent.

Westmore

WESTMORE

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