dancer with a
strange mixture of fervour and hostility.

Magda could imagine no reason for the antagonism which she sensed in the
steady scrutiny of those light-blue eyes. As far as she was concerned,
the Mother Superior was an entire stranger, without incentive either to
like or dislike her.

But to the woman who, while she had been in the world, had been known as
Catherine Vallincourt, the name of Magda Wielitzska was as familiar as
her own. In the dark, slender girl before her, whose pale, beautiful
face called to mind some rare and delicate flower, she recognised the
living embodiment of her brother's transgression--that brother who had
made Diane Wielitzska his wife and the mother of his child.

All she had anticipated of evil consequence at the time of the
marriage had crystallised into hard fact. The child of the "foreign
dancing-woman"--the being for whose existence Hugh's mad passion for
Diane had been responsible--had on her own confession worked precisely
such harm in the world as she, Catherine, had foreseen. And now, the
years which had raised Catherine to the position of Mother Superior of
the community she had entered had brought that child to her doors as a
penitent waveringly willing to make expiation.

Catherine was conscious of a strange elevation of spirit. She felt
ecstatically uplifted at the thought that it might be given to her to
purge from Hugh's daughter, by severity of discipline and penance, the
evil born within her. In some measure she would thus be instrumental in
neutralising her brother's sin.

She was supremely conscious that to a certain extent--though by no means
altogether--her zealous ardour had its origin in her rooted antipathy to
Hugh's wife and hence to the child of the marriage. But, since beneath
her sable habit there beat the heart of just an ordinary, natural
woman, with many faults and failings still unconquered in spite of
the austerities of her chosen life, a certain very human element of
satisfaction mingled itself with her fervour for Magda's regeneration.

With a curious impassivity that masked the intensity of her desire
she had told Magda that, by the rules of the community, penitents who
desired to make expiation were admitted there, but that if once the step
were taken, and the year's vow of penitence voluntarily assumed,
there could be no return to the world until the expiration of the time
appointed.

Somehow the irrevocability of such a vow, undertaken