and she found a place for him in the
little convent chapel.

Madame Arnault, supported by Marcelite, was kneeling in front of the
altar, which blazed with candles. She had grown frightfully old and
frail. Her face was set, and her eyes were fixed with a rigid stare on
the priest who was saying mass. Marcelite's dark cheeks were streaming
with tears. The chapel, which wore a gala air with its lights and
flowers, was filled with people. On the left of the altar, a bishop, in
gorgeous robes, was sitting, attended by priests and acolytes; on the
right, the wooden panel behind an iron grating had been removed, and
beyond, in the nun's choir, the black-robed sisters of the order were
gathered. Heavy veils shrouded their faces and fell to their feet. They
held in their hands tall wax-candles, whose yellow flames burned
steadily in the semi-darkness. Five or six young girls knelt, motionless
as statues, in their midst. They also carried tapers, and their rapt
faces were turned towards the unseen altar within, of which the outer
one is but the visible token. Their eyelids were downcast. Their white
veils were thrown back from their calm foreheads, and floated like wings
from their shoulders.

He felt no surprise when he saw Felice among them. He seemed to have
foreknown always that he should find her thus on the edge of another and
mysterious world into which he could not follow her.

Her skin had lost a little of its warm rich tint; the soft rings of hair
were drawn away under her veil; her hands were thin, and as waxen as the
taper she held. An unearthly beauty glorified her pale face.

"Is it forever too late?" he asked himself in agony, covering his face
with his hands. When he looked again the white veil on her head had been
replaced by the sombre one of the order. "If I could but speak to her!"
he thought; "if she would but once lift her eyes to mine, she would come
to me even now!"

_Felice!_ Did the name break from his lips in a hoarse cry that echoed
through the hushed chapel, and silenced the voice of the priest? He
never knew. But a faint color swept into her cheeks. Her eyelids
trembled. In a flash the rose-garden at La Glorieuse was before him; he
saw the turquoise sky, and heard the mellow chorus of the field gang;
the smell of damask-roses was in the air; her little hand was in his
... he saw her coming swiftly towards him across the dusk of the old
ballroom; her limpid innocent eyes were smiling into his ow