Elizabeth G. Jordan

“ He paused a moment as he was passing Sister George. She had regarded him with a singular look in her wet eyes.
"I am sorry to hear of the loss to the convent," he said, a little formally. "Yet I am Catholic enough to know how you all regard this. In fact, perhaps it is an odd sense of sympathy that makes me feel for the sister. We poor worldlings have to lean on human love for our support. Sister Edgar was spared any of the pain which comes from that being deferred or in jeopardy. It is her spiritual marriage, this death. ”

“ Of late neither had spoken of him, Sister George remaining silent from the sense that she had exhausted the possibilities of the subject in those early talks, and Sister Edgar following her example because her interest had become deeper than she cared to express. To the dying woman the magnificent strength of the man had appealed from the first with a force not to be understood except by those who stand on the brink of their graves and watch the vigorous pass before them. ”

“ Sister George was not obliged to decide the difficult question that lay in this last request. Three days later, when Professor Varick was giving his next lesson, she sat in her place with a stricken face that awed even the liveliest members of her class and carried consternation to the hearts of the more emotional pupils.
"Sister Edgar is worse, I know she is," wrote May Iverson in a pencilled note to a friend near her. "If she were not, Sister George would never look like that." ”

“ Within a stone's throw was life at its greatest pressure—life with its twentieth-century strain and sin and suffering. Here were quiet and peace. There was repose in the dim chapel, in the long, silent corridors, in the rooms where the inmates worked and prayed, in the vaults below these, where many of their predecessors slept their last sleep. The reflection of this peace was in the serene faces of the nuns who strolled along the walks, their slight figures outlined by their severely simple black habits, and their heads innocently erect under their flowing veils. ”

“ He looks so kind," her semi-conscious reflections had run on, "and very refined. The expression of his eyes is charming. So is his smile. Surely, surely, somewhere I have seen it before."
Her thoughts recurred to the teasing likeness as the lessons went on, and then drifted away to that former life of hers, sometimes as remote as if it had been lived on another planet and in another age, but now suddenly and vibratingly real again. She and Jack had been happy together in those old days. ”

“ The spectacle of this suffering young person, whose gestures were usually made at right angles, was sufficiently exhilarating to distract the mind from sentimental reflections. In addition to these excellent reasons, those idols, Sister George and Sister Edgar, were present, sitting primly on opposite sides of the large exhibition hall in which the lessons were given, each in charge of her respective class and each alertly alive to the conduct and manner of every young person under her charge. ”

“ A thrill passed over the assembly. Several of the girls began to cry softly. May Iverson turned an appealing face to the professor. He was listening with surprise to the unusual interruption which had so strangely affected his class.
"I am going to ask you to dismiss us for to-day, Professor Varick," she said, brokenly. "That bell is telling us that our dearest, our very dearest teacher, Sister Edgar, has just died. You know her," she added, "the nun with the lovely face, who always sat down there at the left, where Sister Raymond is sitting now." ”

“ Mary's continued to beat with their accustomed regularity, and the coming of Professor Varick wrought no harm.
If the young man was conscious of the presence of the two sentinels in the background, he showed no recognition of the fact beyond including them in the grave bow made to the assembled class when he entered and departed. To them, however, he was a new type, which they studied with interest and on which they had even commented to one another on several occasions. The grace and ease of manner of this man of the world appealed to the dignified nuns ”

“ The pupils followed it all with comprehending eyes. Even the younger ones had seen it many times before.
"They all go that way," said May Iverson, resentfully, to a classmate. "That awful cemetery is full of women under thirty." The tears filled her sharp eyes as she spoke.
Sister Edgar was saying much the same thing at the same moment to Sister George, who sat beside the bed in the infirmary, to which she had at last been moved. ”

“ It's eminently proper and highly educative to have the dear old priests instruct us, but to inject a young and handsome man into the curriculum is quite another matter. Professor Varick isn't a day over thirty-eight, notwithstanding those lovely gray locks on his temples, and he's very handsome. Did you ever see such eyes? ”

“ The woman's nerves, worn by illness, recoiled at the thought. She trembled violently and caught her friend's hand in both her own.
"Margaret," she cried, brokenly, "how shall I gain strength and courage? I do not want to die." ”

“ Sister Edgar's eyes had an unnatural brightness, and two red spots burned in her cheeks, but her features, outlined in the oval of white linen under the sombre veil, had not yet lost the beauty whose fame had gone beyond the convent walls.
"Who is that nun at St. Mary's who Dr. Fletcher says has the face of an angel, the figure of Diana, and the voice of Calvé?" Miss Iverson had once been asked during an evening reception at her father's home. She had given the information promptly, and then indiscreetly repeated the incident at school, with the result that the eminent specialist, Dr. ”