in Hannaford. So quickly
that no one saw, he laid it against her faintly smiling lips, then hid
it inside his coat.

When the taxi had rushed up the upper Corniche and had taken the
carriage road to Roquebrune, Mary said goodbye to Hannaford in the
_Place_ under the great wall of the old castle. She guessed that,
perhaps, he would have liked an invitation to go with her to the cure's
garden, which he had never seen. But she did not give the invitation.
She even lingered, so that he must have seen she wished him to drive
away; and he took the hint, if it were a hint, at once.

"Goodbye," he said, pleasantly. "Thank you a thousand times, for
everything."

"But it's I who have to thank you!" she protested.

"If I could think you would ever feel like thanking me for anything, I
should be glad."

He released her hand, after pressing it once very hard; got into the
taxi, gave the chauffeur the name of his hotel in the Condamine, and was
whirled away. The last that Mary saw of him he was looking back, waving
his hat as if he were saying goodbye for a long, long time.

XXIV

The big clock had just finished striking three when Mary entered the
church of the old rock-town on the hill. She could feel the vibration of
the last stroke, as if the heart of the church were beating heavily, in
sympathy with her own.

Coming into the dimness after the golden bath of sunlight outside was
like being plunged into night. For an instant all was dark before Mary's
eyes, as if she had been pushed forward with her face against a black
curtain. The once familiar perfume of incense came pungently to her
nostrils, sweet yet melancholy, like a gentle reproach for neglect. She
seemed to be again in the convent chapel of St. Ursula-of-the-Lake.
Every well-known feature of the place was sharply visible; she saw the
carved screen of black oak; the faces of Reverend Mother and the
sisters, white and ardent in the starlike light of tall wax candles; she
heard the voices of women singing, crystal clear, sweet and sexless as
the song of angels. The old oppression under which she had panted in the
last days of her novitiate fell upon her again, like a weight. She felt
that her soul was in a strait-jacket. Then, as she had often felt--and
prayed not to feel--while the pure voices soared, the sensation of being
shut up in a coffin came back to her. She was nailed into a coffin,
lying straight and still under cool, faintly scented flowers; dea