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convent atmosphere so long ago.

      The gap between fourteen and seventeen and a half is a long one, and it will be seen that Zella's point of view had shifted indeed.

      Her last term at the convent was also her happiest one. Although she did not attain to the heights of popularity of which she had dreamed so long, that mattered little to one who knew herself to be the favourite, as it were, of Almighty God. Zella continued to dream happily of her vocation to the religious life, of the austerities she would practise, and of the touching aspect she would present in the ample white habit and falling veil of a novice.

      It ceased to disturb her that Reverend Mother should not take any very violent interest in this aspect of Zella's spiritual development. God saw everything, and was a sufficient audience for the time being.

      Zella no longer asked herself, "What is true—what is the realest thing of all?"

      She thought that she had found it, and if there was still a tiny lurking spirit of inquiry within her, she was hardly aware of its existence.

      Her devotion to the convent increased, and her belief in the infallibility of its teachings was in proportion to the ardour which she characteristically brought to bear upon every new enthusiasm that possessed her.

      But Zella's convent days were not destined to close, as she could have wished, upon this exalted note. That the convent phase was a transitory one was first made manifest in that final admonitory talk by which Mother Veronica strove to prepare those of her elder pupils who were about to leave the school for the perils of that life which now lay before them.

      "You are going to enter a world which is full of temptations, children," she said firmly, but not discouragingly; "and now is the time to show everyone all that your convent training has done for you. You have got to be a credit to your religion, you know. Some of you, perhaps, have Protestant homes "—Zella looked self-conscious—" and most of you, I suppose, will come into contact sooner or later with Protestants. Then you will have to take a firm stand, a very firm stand."

      Mother Veronica's glasses trembled with the determined shakings of her head.

      "Never be ashamed of your religion, children."

      "But, Mother, I'm sure I never should be," said Mary McNeill, with much truth.

      "There are a great many ways of denying Christ, dear. Remember St. Peter. Now, I dare say, it seems a simple enough thing to you to say your grace before and after every meal, but you may not find it at all easy in the world. It needs quite an effort to overcome human respect and make a big, deliberate sign of the Cross, I assure you."

      "I always do," said Dorothy Brady in a self-satisfied manner.

      "You have a good Catholic home, Dorothy. It is a very different thing when you are with strangers, perhaps all of them Protestants, who would think the sign of the Cross odd and out of place. Worldly people have a great objection to the sign of the Cross, it is one of the ways by which you can recognize them."

      "Well, it would be no business of theirs."

      "Quite true, Dorothy; but how would you like it, if you were at a big party, perhaps, and everyone in the room began to laugh or make fun of you for saying your grace and making a good honest sign of the Cross?"

      Zella strove to picture to herself a society of which the behaviour would be such as that described by Mother Veronica, and failed.

      "Then there's Friday abstinence, and the fast-days. Sometimes you're obliged to go out into the world, even on days of penance, because your parents wish it, and you must obey them in all that is not sin. But you're not obliged to enjoy yourselves. Think of St. Rose, who wore thorns concealed under the wreath with which she was made to decorate her hair. Nothing so heroic is required of you, but you must make a very strict rule of recollecting days of abstinence and the like, and keeping to them whatever happens."

      "Supposing it was Friday, and there was nothing but meat to eat?" inquired one of the girls, with much interest.

      "Well, dear, you can make a very good meal off bread and vegetables. Many poor people do not get anything half so nourishing."

      "But one's hostess," said Zella, with a great appearance of perplexity, "she would think it so rude, wouldn't she?"

      There speaks human respect," emphatically retorted Mother Veronica. "What will other people think? Once we begin to ask ourselves that question the Devil has gained half the victory. Besides, you need not make yourself conspicuous. Just sit at the table, smiling pleasantly, attending to the wants of your neighbours on either side, and as. likely as not your empty plate will pass unnoticed. People are not always thinking about you."

      Mother Veronica's method of rendering herself inconspicuous at the luncheon-table, however, failed to make any appeal to Zella.

      But if one was asked why one wasn't eating?" she persisted.

      "Then speak the truth, dear," energetically replied the nun. Just be quite simple and open about it all, and answer very quietly that, as a Catholic, you are obeying the rule of your Church in abstaining from meat one day a week, the same day as that on which our dear Lord died for us. I assure you that sometimes a little word like that, and the edification given by seeing a Catholic faithful to her religion in those ways, have just made all the difference to a soul—perhaps brought it into the Church, even."

      Zella again tried to visualize social intercourse as run on the lines indicated by Mother Veronica, and again failed.

      "I can assure you," continued the earnest nun, "that people in the world are very much on the lookout to see how Catholics behave. Protestants know very well what a Catholic ought to be, and you will find that they respect you much more for living up to your duties, even though you may get laughed at."

      Zella listened with a growing sense of discontent. Was this all the light that the convent teaching could shed upon the future? Were these words of final advice, which she felt to be so curiously inadequate, the outcome of a Catholic education, the summing up, as it were, of a long course of preparation?

      The familiar sense of unreality obsessed her anew. These counsels did not really mean anything. Circumstances would never shape themselves in such fashion as to require the course of conduct prescribed by Mother Veronica.

      A dim foreshadowing of new standards, of yet another scale of relative values, troubled Zella's thoughts of the near future.

      XVIII

       Table of Contents

      THE midsummer breaking-up drew near. The last days arrived, weighted with all that oppression consecrated to last days, and vaguely reminding Zella of the atmosphere at Boscombe. Several of the elder girls were leaving, and the school watched with interest to see the degree of grief which would mark the affection in which each held the beloved convent.

      "Mary McNeill has begun to howl already. I saw her last night at Benediction."

      "Poor thing! She always cries fairly easily, though. When I leave next year, I expect I shall simply howl buckets full. It'll be too frightful."

      "Dorothy Brady hasn't cried a bit, and yet she minds leaving most frightfully, I know. But she's bound to begin sooner or later."

      "Oh, bound to!"

      Such fragments of discussion filled the air. Zella began to consider her own attitude, and to wonder anxiously how a happy medium could best be struck between excessive weeping, which might be difficult of achievement, and heartless indifference, signalled by a tearless departure. Mary McNeill had been at the convent for ten years, Dorothy for six, and Zella did not feel that her comparatively short experience entitled her to a quite equal display of emotion. Nevertheless, she reminded herself, it was at the convent that she had undergone the deepest and truest experience which life would doubtless ever have to offer her—her conversion to the Catholic Faith.

      That evening at night prayers she began to

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